


Cricket

by HarperJean



Series: Cricket [1]
Category: Hanson (Band)
Genre: Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - 1970s, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - No Band, Close Sibling Relationships, College Parties, Coping, Depression, F/M, Grief, Rape, Self Harm, Siblings, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-10-30 20:23:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 24
Words: 42,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10884267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarperJean/pseuds/HarperJean
Summary: Cricket is a young girl growing up in small town Ohio in the 1970's with her three brothers - Isaac, Taylor, and Zac. With absent parents and the world changing around them, they must navigate growing up and growing apart.





	1. Chapter 1

#### 

Part One - June 

The summer I turned 16 began like all the others. I was excited, as every teenager in Westerville was, for the final bell of the school year, followed by 3 glorious months of freedom. June, July, and August stretched before us, waiting to be captured and filled with lazy afternoons at the neighborhood pool, watching my brothers eye the girls I shared a lunch table with, seeing which ones puberty had been kind to. Sitting next to Taylor at the piano, playing chords while he effortlessly created a melody. Cooking sloppy joes for the boys (pickles for Ike, a square of American for Zac) who would wolf them down like feral children and ask for more to fuel their growing bodies. There was never enough, but I would make as much as I possibly could, and always scoot my leftovers over to Taylor. Night time adventures followed by dozing uncomfortably in the treehouse that we still held sacred, even though Ike was back from his first year at OSU, where his friends all called him Isaac. 

I was turning 16 that July. I wasn’t planning on having a party because I didn’t really have any friends close enough to invite over or go out for burgers with. I would spend my birthday this year, like every year, with my brothers. 

The fact of that matter was, my three brothers and I were inseparable. They were everything to me, and I was their queen. Ike was the oldest, but he had only been about two years old when I came along, so really none of us could remember a time when we were ever alone, and we didn’t want that to change any time soon. Taylor, my silent shadow from the moment he came into the world, was only 9 months my junior, the smallest gap between any of us. We had been mistaken for twins our entire life, and if someone told me we actually had shared a womb, I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised. He was my soulmate, the knowing looks we shared our first language, English coming second. He was often accused for being emotionally unavailable or too shy, but to me he was an open book. Zac rounded out the clan 2 years later. In the summer of ‘72 I, Christine, was turning 16...but no one called me Christine, except my mother who had opened her veins in the bathtub 8 years earlier...the golden promise of summer powerless to the black cloud of sadness that haunted her relentlessly. To her, I had been Christine. To everyone else, I was Cricket. 

Ike arrived home for the summer the very same day that school ended for the rest of us. I was so happy to have him back. The house felt wrong without him, and we found ourselves constantly waiting for him to visit every weekend. But now there were three uninterrupted months to look forward to with no pesky college classes to occupy his mind. He was pursuing engineering, just like our father, and would undoubtedly join our remaining parent working on farming equipment an hour north of our house, in the magical, mysterious land where the corn came from. Like father, like son. I knew that he would much rather be playing his guitar, but we all knew that the music we played for each other was a hobby, not a career. Ike was my rock. We shared our father’s features: light amber curls and luminous brown eyes which made some people uncomfortable with their intensity. Ike’s presence filled up a room, his charisma capable of getting him out of any kind of consequence for the trouble he loved to cause. He was spontaneous and exciting, always ready for adventure. He was the object of many girls’ affection, which garnered me friends that didn’t last. But, I would be lying if I said I didn’t love the look on their faces when they finally figured out that I was the apple of my brother’s eye, and no homecoming queen could ever compete with the bond we shared. Having him home would mean exciting escapades and summer time adventures. I built it up so much in my mind that I could think of nothing else for the last few days of my sophomore year.

We always walked home from school, but after the final bell rang, I emerged flanked by my brothers to find Ike parked right in front of the building, sitting on the hood of his car, a sly smirk on his face, waiting patiently for his comrades. Summer had begun.

As you would expect, we had been left to our own devices for much of our formative years. I was days away from turning eight when my mother died, and she had begun fading into nothingness long before that. There were countless nights where we would appear at an empty dining room table, forced to boil hot dogs while our stomachs growled loudly, but never loud enough for our mother to hear from her bedroom fortress. Ten year old Ike would draw smiley faces with ketchup on our plates while we waited for the water to bubble, while we all wondered how our mother could possibly sleep at a time like this. Other days, we would come downstairs in the morning to a feast of french toast, our mother’s absolute favorite thing to prepare. There would be mountains of it, letting us know that she had been awake for hours preparing. Bacon, sausage, fruit, and 3 kinds of syrup set up all around the table, our eyes wide and our mouths watering. “Nothing but the best for my babies!” She would exclaim, her blue eyes glittering. We would eat off of the french toast for a few days, and then it was back to plain spaghetti noodles, while she retreated into her room and cried herself to sleep at three in the afternoon. 

Our father worked constantly, having four hungry mouths to feed, three of them being teenage boys (I would often slide my portions over to Taylor, not for lack of hunger, just because I knew how there was never quite enough to satiate his pubescent appetite). His own mouth he fed with scotch and free bar peanuts. We didn’t mind. We became each other's parents, making sure we all got dressed, fed, and out the door every morning, taking turns making dinner and spending evenings either in the treehouse we found in the woods behind our yard, or somehow ending up all piled into the same twin bed, not having to say a word but understanding how desperately we all needed each other. We were so codependent, in fact, that people often wondered what the exact nature of our relationship was. I certainly didn’t have any female friends, which made other girls simultaneously jealous and suspicious - jealous because my brothers were all incredibly handsome, suspicious because they doted on me while never having girlfriends of their own). We tended to avoid school functions, occasionally swinging by a football game as one single entity, and leaving by halftime. We just never had the impulse to branch out beyond each other. We had everything we needed, which made others uncomfortable. Even our dad would comment on how it gave him the heebie jeebies when we would communicate with glances. But he was an only child. He wouldn’t understand.

Ike going to college had been difficult, but luckily he had only ventured to Columbus and was home nearly every weekend, meaning we all lived for Friday nights. This friday, school having just ended, we climbed into his car, as he announced our next adventure:

“End of the semester party at OSU tonight. Who’s up for a drive to Columbus?”

“I highly doubt we should take the boys,” I said, my maternal instinct strong even though I wasn’t that much older than my younger brothers. “And...didn’t you just get home from Columbus?” 

“I think they’d be fine.” Ike replied nonchalantly, “and come on, Cricket, it’s like a half hour drive. It’s not that big of a deal.” 

“If Cricket’s going, I’m going,” Taylor stated plainly. He hated when our experiences weren’t shared.

“And if Tay’s going I am not staying home by myself,” Zac whined. 

“Ok, first of all Taylor, you would hate it because you hate parties but that’s beside the point. Second of all, Zac, you’re thirteen,” I responded, glancing at Ike for help but receiving none. Ike was an enabler, but the group needed one to function. Otherwise, we would never leave the house. 

We talked in circles for 10 minutes until, pulling up in the driveway, three sets of eyes turned to me. There was something about Taylor’s blue eyes, so different from my own, that could persuade me to do just about anything. I heaved a heavy sigh, knowing I was overruled. Three to one. 

“Fine. We all go.”


	2. Chapter 2

It was a luxury we took for granted, never having to explain our plans to our Father. During the summer, he would come home from the bar after we had already left for a night time escapade, assuming we were in our beds. We would try to get home before he woke up or after he left for work the next morning, but even if we were caught in the act he would be apathetic at best. We would always be able to say we had slept in the treehouse, to which he would grunt, obviously disapproving of our choices, but lacking the energy to do anything about it. 

Our father had become distant with us after our mother died. He had been the one to find her in the bathroom, and had also been the one who failed to find a note that explained anything. I remember so clearly hearing the wails coming from upstairs as I cooked my brothers eggs, assuming my mother was still sleeping peacefully. It sounded like an animal, and shocked me more than my mother’s macabre actions. After she was gone, he truly was lost, especially when it came to his children. He loved us, but it was our mother who understood us. Who had read us stories and told us about fairies. Who cleaned our scrapes and kissed our tear stained cheeks. Where she felt everything too hard, he didn’t seem to feel anything at all. He remained stoic and dry eyed during her funeral, while the four of us clutched each other tightly, never breaking contact. Ike, the oldest, was only eight, but it was in that moment that every single one of us grew up. I’m not even sure if our father ever looked me in the eye after that. He definitely never looked at Taylor again. After all, Taylor had my mother’s eyes. 

Our father was, as usual, nowhere to be found when we came home from school. We spent the evening on the porch, Ike and Zac tossing a baseball back and forth during the golden hour, while I brought us cold bottles of coke to nurse while the sun set. Once the first stars started to appear, Ike announced it was time to pile into the car and head to OSU's campus. The drive was lovely...cool night air rushing through the open windows. I was seated in the backseat, Taylor by my side, a comfort I took for granted. Zac chattered excitedly the whole way. Taylor and I looked at each other silently and smirked. 

I heard the party before I saw it. We pulled up and, finding no parking on the street, ventured down two more blocks. The house must be packed, I thought to myself. I had never quite seen anything like it in my childhood in Westerville - the classic Americana town where a party meant dinner and an evening of Scrabble. We walked in timidly, Ike leading the way with his charm turned on all the way. I marveled at his ability to deflect awkwardness and never shy away from a conversation while I did my best to survey the crowd, quickly observing and taking stock of the situation at hand. I looked over at Zac because I knew he would be in heaven. His big, brown, puppy dog eyes were lit up with excitement. He longed for the day he would break free from Westerville and journey to big cities, make music, and live with like-minded artists. This, being the closest he’d ever gotten to his idealized fantasies, had him practically salivating, and he jumped in head first, running into the throng, surely searching for a contraband beer. I felt Taylor’s hand on my back, his shyness putting up a barrier that only I could breach. We all knew that he would hate the environment and yet he had insisted in not being left out of the group. I had a feeling I would be guiding him through the night until we left.

“Isaac!!” I heard a girl shout from across the room. She ran over to hug my brother. She had long black hair, surely straightened with an iron and falling below her waist. She was all limbs and fringe, and I couldn’t help but stare as she threw her tan arms around Ike, welcoming him to the party with a huge smile. She grabbed his hand and led him to another room. We were three. 

Taylor didn’t last long before being noticed. He was the most handsome of all my brothers, with long sandy hair and a chiseled cheekbones. His blue eyes were all at once compelling and inviting, a warm stare that made you feel noticed and understood. He listened so well it was jarring, but then you got used to it and it was actually pretty wonderful. We were all painted in earth tones, the four of us, but Taylor’s eyes were shockingly sky filled. His hair was lighter than the rest of us, with golden streaks combed perfectly through, which got progressively lighter after June and July by the pool. He had an air of maturity and wisdom about him, and before I knew it he was deep in conversation with a gaggle of tipsy girls. I smiled, proud of him for finding his footing. 

I heard a full throated laugh as soon as I sensed Taylor’s light leave my range of vision. 

It was like electricity buzzing across my shoulders. I brushed them, thinking a stray tendril had come loose from my braid. I turned to my right and was met with a smile bigger than any I had ever seen. A large, toothy smile, the creases in his youthful face accentuating the shape of the smirk. He let out another loud laugh. He was holding a beer in his hand, talking to a group of boys (who were intimidatingly older than I), making jokes and not pausing to look at me. The way he spoke had a showmanship about it, as if he was addressing a crowd. He was so incredibly different than the three male presences I had grown up with. That I was interwoven with. That I kept tabs on day and night. He was short but his presence filled the room, his ebony hair falling in front of light grey eyes. As he laughed he showed a gap in between his front two teeth. He wore glasses, that on anyone at my highschool would incite taunts, but they made him look intelligent and witty. His frame was slight, but he didn’t look uncomfortable in his skin, like I often felt with my bony limbs. It was strange- the sensation I had felt made it seem as if he had been staring at me, but now it seemed like he hadn’t even noticed my existence. I turned back around and steered myself to the porch, noticing that Zac was busy gawking at a spontaneous drum circle. I was sure I couldn’t draw him away even if I tried. I felt awkward and abandoned by the rest of my clan. 

I sat on the porch, surrounded by people stepping out to get some fresh air (if cigarettes can be considered fresh air). A girl came up and asked if I needed a drink, and I declined politely. Only a few minutes later, Zac stumbled up to me and grabbed my hand, a sparkle in his bloodshot eyes. That didn’t take long, I thought to myself. Although whether he was actually high or just high on life was a debate. He was the most excitable of all of us, especially in social situations. I’m sure he was loving the attention he was receiving for being a “cool” 13 year old at a college party. “I love it here Cricket. I can’t wait to go to college.” I shook him off and he galloped away, joining the throng once more.

I was alone. I always relished my time when, for whatever reason, all three of my brothers were somewhere else, because it happened so rarely. I leaned against one of the wooden beams holding up the porch roof, and dug my copy of “The Two Towers” out of my beaded bag. 

“You know, most people go nuts for ‘Fellowship’ but ‘Towers’ has always been my favorite Lord of the Rings book,” said a bouncy tenor I didn’t recognize. I placed my finger by the word I had just finished and looked up. It was the same boy from earlier. The same one I could have sworn had been looking at me. 

It’s funny how someone who you spent maybe a maximum of thirty minutes with can completely throw your entire world off its axis. It’s funny how to this day, I could explain this boys’ every feature to you if you asked. I could tell you about the freckle on his left cheek. I could tell you that the nail on his right index finger was longer than all the others. I could tell you that he talked to me in the same tone in which he addressed the large crowd of boys, which seemed strange to me. I have spent countless nights awake thinking about the next half hour. How everything would be different if I hadn’t sat on the porch. If I had gone and sat in the car, or gone with Taylor and Zac into the crowded living room. If I hadn’t gone to the party in the first place. If none of us had. But we did go to the party and I did sit on the porch. And I continued to indulge this stranger in conversation. 

“Yeah...I like it,” I mumbled as he sat down next to me. I was curious why he had left the group of boys he had been laughing and joking with, but I was too flabbergasted to ask. I failed to mention that this was my fourth time reading “The Two Towers” and that I had always liked it best. I remember getting into an argument with a girl in English class one year, when we had been assigned to read “The Hobbit.” She said she had read “Fellowship of the Rings” and had stopped. I, for some reason, took great offense to this, not understanding how one could just stop the journey there. I had shouted without raising my hand “That’s not the end of the story!!” and had been admonished for speaking out of turn. 

“Who’s your favorite character?” He asked. It was strange, being questioned about hobbits and elves by a college student at a college party, where everyone else was nursing a beer or dragging on a cigarette. 

“Merry,” I answered plainly.

He chuckled, and looked at me knowingly, the smirk never leaving his gregarious face. 

“Good answer. I wasn’t expecting that.” 

The four hobbits held a very special place in my heart because, like any group of four, they reminded me intensely of myself and my siblings. Merry was Taylor, so therefore he was the one I felt connected to (I was Frodo, Ike was Samwise, and Zac would always be the hyperactive Pip in case you were wondering, which I’m sure you weren’t). And yet I explained none of that to this stranger. I just looked at his grey eyes with confusion in my own. 

“I’m David,” he finally admitted.

I blinked twice before realizing he was waiting for my response. “Oh...Oh I’m Cricket.”

“Cricket?” he clearly thought I was offering a fake name to remain anonymous. 

“Yea...my name is Christine but everyone calls me Cricket. I’m Ike’s younger sister.” I explained, gesturing inside in Ike’s general direction. Of course, in my brain every student here knew everyone else. 

“Ike?” 

“Isaac Hanson?”

“Hmmm...I don’t know him. Is he an art major?” David inquired.

“No, no he’s an engineering major.” I replied, confused. 

“Ah...I see. I don’t really know any of them. Not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I spend most of my time on campus in studios.” 

That answered my next question, which was why he was wandering the hallowed halls of OSU. I wondered what kind of art he did, but I was too embarrassed to ask. 

“Oh.” I stumbled to a halt in conversation. It was odd, having to talk to someone I didn’t grow up with. Even outside of my family unit, everyone in Westerville knew each other enough to not have to ever make getting to know you small talk. 

“So...Cricket. What are you studying?”

I laughed quietly. Never in a million years would I think someone would mistake me for a college student. I looked my age, which at the time was a pretty immature 15. “High school?” I offered with a small laugh. “I’ll be a junior in the fall.” 

“Ah...I see,” he said again. He sipped his beer thoughtfully and nodded in a way that let me know he was truly taking in the few words that had escaped my mouth. 

I never mentioned my other brothers. I never mentioned that I was from Westerville or that my mother had killed herself or that my father was a borderline alcoholic. I never mentioned that I loved grilled cheese sandwiches from the Westerville Grille or that nothing was better than riding my bike all by myself by the dam while the sun was going down. I failed to mention that I had never talked this long to a boy who I wasn’t related to. All we learned about each other was our ages, and our mutual love for the second installment of “The Lord of the Rings.” 

He sat with me on the porch for a little while longer, nursing the beer in his hand. He offered to go get me one but I once again declined. I didn’t like the taste of beer. Ike chalked it up to my young age, but I had a feeling I would never grow to like it. There was something about the smell that put my stomach on edge, and I wished this boy hadn’t been sipping it now. 

“So where is your brother?” David asked nonchalantly, and I didn’t inquire about which one. I still don’t know why I didn’t volunteer the information that there were two other brothers somewhere in this house. 

I looked behind me through the front door. “Who knows.” 

He laughed and I returned to my book. I felt his gaze on me. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a girl read Tolkien at a party. You’re an odd bird, Cricket.” 

I smiled despite myself. “Well there’s a first time for everything I suppose," I muttered, surprised at my own confidence.

He was sitting so close to me that I could smell the rancid beer aroma that I so detested on his breath. Our eyes, his bloodshot, mine clear, were only inches from each other. He was looking at me with an intensity that I had never experienced. Sure, my brothers looked into my soul daily but it was different. David seemed to be attempting to solve a puzzle, whereas my brothers already knew the solution. 

“I want to draw you.” He said plainly.

I looked back up from my book

“What?”

“Yeah I saw you reading over here and that was my first thought.”

“I...I don’t live around here. I live in Westerville,” I blabbered, not knowing what else to say. I hadn’t meant to give away any information at this party full of strangers, but the words spilled out involuntarily. 

_What is happening, what is happening, what is happening_ were the only three words that were buzzing around my skull like angry insects. I looked around desperately for a pair of earthy eyes in which I could find help. To which I could send the signal “save me,”...but at the same time I wondered if I even wanted to be saved. There was something about this new boy that made my hair stand on end with excitement and fear. 

If I could go back in time and tell my fifteen year old self anything, it would be that David Robinson had a habit of going to parties and finding vulnerable girls to talk to. That he had used the line “I want to draw you” countless times, and it generally worked. That he had demons of his own, and used this routine to find control. To find power. That I was one of many girls. 

“I want to show you something.” 

He leaned in close to say those words, his beer breath brushing my cheek. He took my hand in one of his and with the other closed my book for me. I must have flashed him a look of complete panic because he started chuckling quietly.

I couldn’t help but smile back, the laughter contagious, “What?!” I asked. 

“Nothing...come with me,” and he led me into the house. “Are you sure I can’t get you a beer or anything?” 

“No, no...really I’m fine I promise.” 

I often wonder how different everything would be if I had been intercepted by one of my brothers in that moment. If instead of trailing behind this boy I had just met like a lost puppy, I had swerved and found Zac laughing goofily and banging a bongo drum. But, that didn’t happen. And I suppose there’s no point in wishing that it did. 

Before we get too far into this let me say that I knew what sex was and I knew that was what David wanted. Just because I didn’t have a mother didn’t mean I was stupid. I had three brothers, and was there when all of them went through puberty. I accidentally found Isaac’s dirty magazines in the treehouse when I was nine. I had walked in on Taylor masturbating more than once. I took baths with both my younger brothers far longer than any girl should have and a few years later I would watch as Zac left the pool house exactly ten seconds before a girl in his grade, both their hair disheveled and both their faces flushed (even later I found out that while he told classmates they had gone all the way, they had only gotten to second. These boys can not keep secrets from me for the life of them). None of those moments were particularly pretty for me, but I was not sheltered about males and their desires in any way. Contrary to some rumors in town, nothing ever happened between me and any of my brothers. They have all seen me naked, but what sibling hasn’t? Our tribe would strip our clothes off to jump in a river in a heartbeat, we didn’t have time for modesty. We knew each other better than anyone, so it never even phased us. 

I was not sheltered but I was also only fifteen. And maybe it was because the male species held no fascination to me (I knew it better than my own at that point), but I had absolutely no desire to kiss a boy or to have his fingers where they shouldn’t be. And yet here I was, kissing a virtual stranger. It was my first kiss. And it was wet and aggressive and not particularly very nice. My mind was racing too fast and I couldn’t focus on anything. 

To this day I wonder whose room we were in. Whose bed he pushed me down on. 

It happened fast. And say what you want- that I could have stopped him, that I could have said no. But please remember when you were a very shy, very quiet fifteen year old and how hard it is to get a word in edgewise when there was a twenty one year old college boy kissing you. I tried to say something but every time I took a breath he would shush me with his hand or put his mouth on mine. I didn’t know what to do. I should have screamed. This is a story of should haves. 

My pants were off and his hand was in my underwear, searching for something. His breathing was heavy and animalistic and I wondered how drunk he was. I tried to squirm away but he held me down. He covered my mouth with his other hand. There was no escape. 

The pain wasn’t like falling off my bike and scraping my wrists. It was deeper. It was like the moment you see your mother’s blood smeared across the white porcelain of the bathtub. 

When he finished he left me laying there, my body feeling heavy and sore. I found my underwear on the floor and put them back on, immediately feeling blood pooling on the white cotton. I hadn’t even had my period yet, but I guess I could use that as an excuse for why we had to leave the party. I pulled on my jeans and searched the room for something to tie around my waist to hide the leak. I found a sweater in the closet, placing it carefully around myself. I walked out of the room calmly, with only one thought in my head - find all my brothers. Leave this house. Never look back.


	3. Chapter 3

“Cricket!!” I turned suddenly. I saw Zac loping towards me, bleary eyed and exceptionally content. 

“You okay, buddy?” I asked sarcastically. Even though he was only three years younger than me, I was fiercely protective of my youngest brother. I wanted to envelope him in my arms and never let go. To take him away from this awful place where strange boys take you into strange rooms. 

“Oh I’m so great, Cricket. So great. There’s a guy in there telling me about sacred geometry and I had to get up and leave because I couldn’t handle it. You know? So cool, Cricket. So cool. What are you doing? I never want to leave, Cricket. There is so much love in this room right now, Cricket.” 

“Wow, Zac,” I wondered how many times he was going to say my name. He turned around and rejoined the party. I wanted to call out to him and ask him to stay with me, so I could hold him in my arms and cry into his hair. 

The sun was peeking over the horizon when we rolled back into the driveway, the promise of a beautiful summer morning ahead. We saw our father’s truck, and wondered when he had arrived home last night. We quietly climbed the stairs, Ike carrying a sleeping Zac, and nestled into our respective beds, hoping we could sleep away the morning without disturbance, and wake up in the afternoon refreshed. I took off my pants and underwear, changed into fresh ones, and hid the bloody clothes in my closet. I would throw them away later, after I had slept and washed the stench of shame out of my hair. 

The party had continued on through the night. After Zac ran back into the crowd, I couldn’t find my brothers and I was in such a daze that I didn’t have the energy to look for them. I didn’t want to look any human being in the eye. I went to the back seat of Ike’s car and dozed for a couple hours. I awoke to whoops and yells, the party still going strong. I checked my watch and, seeing it was 3:30 am, thought it was time to go round up the troops. I drove home illegally, Ike buzzed from his fair share of the keg, Zac accidentally too high to do much other than philosophize, and Taylor paranoid that the cops were after us, even without the effects of marijuana. Luckily, Ike had let me drive his car around the neighborhood in order to practice for when I turned 16, and I carefully and slowly maneuvered us back to our house. 

I slept for a couple hours in my own bed, and was awoken by the bright sun streaming through my bedroom window. I stretched like a cat under my haphazardly placed sheets, knowing that I didn’t have to get up yet if I didn’t want to. But I needed to take a bath. 

I carefully walked as silently as I could to the bathroom and methodically began to clean myself. I turned the right knob of the bathtub all the way, not touching the left. I needed the water to be scalding. Boiling. I took off my night clothes and folded them carefully, laying them on top of the toilet in a nice bundle. I took a clean towel and washcloth from the closet and set them by the tub, standing on the bathmat naked until the water was the level I wanted (which was incredibly wasteful, but I needed to be able to submerge myself). I turned the water off, the room already full of steam, and stepped into the searing water. I closed my eyes and let my skin scream for me. I let my pores cry for me. 

I scrubbed every inch of my skin raw. 

When I left the bathroom I was wrapped in a perfectly clean, perfectly white towel, the cool air shocking me after the hot steam of the bath, making me burst out in goosebumps all over. My cheeks were pink and shiny and while I was still in my towel I brushed my hair until every tangle was out, and before any could reappear I wove it into my customary braid. I was as clean as I could possibly make myself. 

***

 

I knew I needed to check on the boys. After putting on a pair of Taylor’s old jeans and a clean blue button up that had gone through the ranks, I peeked into Taylor and Zac’s shared bedroom, both of them sprawled on their twin beds, snoring heavily. I tiptoed down to the kitchen, looked out the window, and breathed a sigh of relief to see our father had already left for work. Thank goodness. If he was to reprimand us, at least it wouldn’t be until later that night. I poured three glasses of cold water and carried them cautiously up the stairs, placing one on each bedside table for when they woke up. I knew they would be intensely thirsty. Then I went back downstairs, poured myself a glass, and parked on the front porch, the fresh air cleansing me of last night’s smells that still haunted my nose (even though I had scrubbed them all away). I gulped the cool water quickly, the sensation of it sliding down my throat grounding me to the moment. I had a bad habit of sliding off into dream world, and tried to focus on the circumstances at hand as often as I could. I was a daydreamer, plain and simple. I had inherited it from my mother, and therefore I was constantly trying to troubleshoot it. I didn’t want to get lost in dreams, like she had. I didn’t want to lose myself to the dream of death. 

“I have never been more hungry in my entire life.” 

I started laughing before I even turned to look. Always so overdramatic, that Zac. 

“Oh please.”

“I’m serious, Cricket I could eat an entire horse and also another horse.”

I looked back at my brother, probably still a little high from the night before, thus his revved appetite. 

“Can we go to the Grille? Pleeeeease??” 

“Do you have money?” I asked. 

“I bet Ike does.” 

“Zac…”

“I’m serious, Cricket! We need to celebrate the beginning of summer!”

Celebrating was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to hide out in the treehouse for quite possibly the rest of my life. 

“Wasn’t that the entire point of the party we went to last night?” 

“I mean the four of us.” 

He was right, I supposed. And like clockwork, I heard Ike’s footsteps on the stairs. I could distinguish all of their footfalls flawlessly. 

“Well I’m starving.” He stated plainly. 

Zac looked at me like an eager puppy. 

“I’ll just make breakfast.” I started to get up, planning scrambled eggs in my head. That would be the easiest and quickest. Plus, I refused to ever make anything resembling French toast. 

“I think we should go to the Grille,” Zac suggested, as if he had just thought of it that second. 

“YES, let’s do that. No offense, Cricket, but I need something that will stick to my ribs, and about a gallon of coffee” Ike explained. 

“Your treat?” I inquired hopefully.

“Sure.”

Zac bounded up the stairs. The look I gave Ike said “How does he find that energy after a night of partying and barely any sleep?” He returned it with one that said plainly “He’s young.” It wasn’t like he was all that much younger than us, and yet the innocence and excitement of youth seemed to pour out of his every orifice. 

Bleary eyed and not quite awake, we ambled recklessly to the Westerville Grille, travelling through uptown in the late morning glow. We were a pack. It felt so right, I could have cried. Or shouted. Or laughed. No one could break us. 

The boys hadn’t been lying, they were ravenous. They barely came up for air. When the fork to mouth movement finally slowed slightly, Ike spoke.

“I had fun last night.” he declared while shoveling the last of his hash browns in his mouth. “You know I could seriously get another order of these.” 

“So much fun,” Zac added, his mouth completely full. 

“What did you all do?” I asked. It was an honest question, I hadn’t seen any of them the entire night. 

“Drank, danced, et cetera,” Ike offered. 

“Oh.” 

“What?” 

“What do you mean, what?” I snapped back, defensively. 

“You’re annoyed.” Damn them for being able to read me like a book. “You’re the one that said we should all go last night, Cricket.” 

Yes, I’m painfully aware of that, I wanted to say. 

“I wasn’t accusing you, you can do whatever you want.” I picked over my scrambled eggs restlessly. We were all a bit cranky and could have used about 4 more hours of sleep. I really just wanted to ask if he knew who David was. I was digging myself deeper than I had intended, and had inadvertently lost my appetite in the process. I looked down at my plate and wondered if I would ever actually get my appetite back. Without even voicing this, Taylor started taking bites off of my plate. I decided to stop talking and I started wondering what this summer would hold for us, but every time I tried to push my mind into the coming days, I couldn’t get past the events of the night before, as if it were a giant roadblock in the middle of my brain. After the boys licked their plates clean, we sat in our booth for a few moments in silence. We all wanted to talk about the previous night but we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to do it. I wasn’t even going to go there at this point. The whole experience left a strange taste in our mouths. Looking back, it’s now obvious that it magnified the fact that we were now a little too old to spend the summer days in a treehouse, or riding our bikes all over town, or staying up late reading to each other. But we didn’t want to be. 

***

I spent the rest of that lazy day reading “The Two Towers” with my legs dangling out of my bedroom window, occasionally going to the bathroom to make sure I didn’t ruin another pair of underwear. The bleeding had stopped, but I was still paranoid about it. I loved sitting in my window. It was a precarious perch, but my favorite. I could feel at peace enough to read, but still keep an eye on Ike and Zac, once again throwing a baseball back and forth in the front yard. As the sun was setting, Taylor snuck into my room and joined me in my window. We were getting too big to both fit on the sill comfortably, but we made it work. 

“Who was the boy you were talking to last night?” He asked earnestly. So he had seen me. Of course he had. 

“His name is David.”

“Oh.”

“Why?”

“No reason, I was just wondering.”

“I know, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrogate you. I’m just cranky. Not enough sleep for any of us.” 

“Nope, not at all.” 

Taylor and I could spend hours next to each other and never have to say a word. I cherished this about our relationship. He just contentedly watched the boys toss their baseball back and forth and sat next to me while I tried to quiet my mind as it was racing through the events of last night. I rested my very tired head on his shoulder. I mainly wanted my brain to shut up so that he wouldn’t somehow inexplicably read my thoughts like he always did. I knew I would have to tell him about last night. I just couldn’t bring myself to yet. 

***

The first days of this long summer break were strange, to say the least. Nothing bad happened, we just carried on as normal, but from the moment we rolled back into the driveway after the night at the party, something was off. It was as if we were all trying to fit into sweaters that were just a little too tight. In the mornings we would wake later than normal, but we would never find our way to each other’s beds like we used to. Previous summer mornings always ended with all four of us in one bed, planning the day, until our stomachs growled and we decided it was time to make a late breakfast. That didn’t happen this year, though. The first few mornings I waited patiently for the energy inside the house to pull me to one particular brother. I mustered my own energy and tried to pull them to me. I tossed and turned and leafed through my book and before I knew it I could hear voices in the kitchen, which made me bolt upright and fly downstairs, my night gown streaming behind me. Taylor was already at the stove, cracking eggs into a skillet. Ike was reading the paper and drinking coffee, and it startled me how grown up he looked. 

“Morning.” I said shortly. 

“Hey little one,” Ike replied, looking up from the paper. It always made me laugh when my older brother called me ‘little one’, seeing as I really wasn’t that much younger than him. But he always did, and I always let him.

“Eggs?” Taylor inquired. 

“Yeah, sure, thank you.” Even though I was the only girl in the clan, Taylor was the most maternal. Soon Zac joined us at the kitchen table, our stomachs all roaring for food. 

We ate in silence and I sighed heavily as Taylor gathered up our dirty dishes and immediately started washing them. 

“So what are we up to today, boys?” 

“Well I don’t know what _we_ are up to,” Ike replied, “but I am going into town to try to find a job for the summer.” 

“Wait, what?” I looked up surprised as he stood to refill his coffee mug. He looked at me, not offering an answer. “Why do you need a job?” 

“It’s called tuition, Cricket, and it must be paid. And if you think Dad is helping any more you are wrong.” 

I groaned. I didn’t want to be reminded of the inevitability of adulthood. Jobs were for the school year. Ike had spent his time in between classes working at a burger joint in Columbus to help pay for his schooling, but I had never expected that need to carry over to the golden days of summer. I was aware that our family’s income was slipping. My father was drinking away more of the money that came into the house and the meager savings that our mother had left us had dwindled into nothingness. I didn’t envy the other kids in Westerville often, but it was moments like these where I wouldn’t have minded having two functioning parents. 

I didn’t want Ike to go get a job and leave the three of us here alone. He was the one that always started playing his guitar on summer nights, causing us to drop whatever we were doing and join him. Taylor and I would sit together at the piano and smile at each other while he created a melody over my clumsy chords. He was much better than me. Ever since Ike had gone to college, there wasn’t as much music in the house. I missed it. 

Before I knew it he was out the door and in his car, driving away from the house. I couldn’t even pinpoint the reason why I was so upset. I knew he was just being responsible. He was just doing what needed to be done, unlike either of our parents. And yet, I felt betrayed. All I wanted was this summer to be exactly like all the previous ones. That surely wasn’t too much to ask. I didn’t want Ike to be a man, I wanted him to be a boy. I wanted them all to be my boys. And more than anything I wanted to tell them about what had happened at the party, and for them to somehow defend my honor, but I knew I couldn’t do that. Not yet. I felt so ashamed of the events of that night that I didn’t know if I could ever tell them. 

That afternoon, Taylor, Zac, and I were left to our own devices. We decided to ride our bikes to the pool and splurge on some ice cream (after raiding our father’s room and finding money just where he always left it - in a lone grey sock with no match in his top right drawer). 

I changed into my bathing suit and felt myself shudder as the material touched my groin. I closed my eyes for a moment and breathed in deeply, trying desperately not to descend into yet another panic. I didn’t have to go if I didn’t want to. I knew that. I didn’t have to put on a brave face just so that my two little brothers could splash around in the deep end for a few hours. I told myself to count down from five and once I was finished I would be ready to go. 

“Five…” I whispered. I looked around my room. It was small, but it was mine. A benefit of being the only girl in the family. 

“Four…” It had been four days since the party. Every moment since that had felt fuzzy, like I had wool wrapped around my head. I wondered if my brothers had noticed at all. 

“Three…” my youngest brother burst into my room. 

“Are you coming….what...what is wrong with you?” Zac asked when he saw me standing very still in the middle of my room, my eyes closed.

“What? Nothing?” I quickly reached for the over sized t-shirt I planned on wearing over my blue one piece. It had been Ike’s before I pawned it out of his dresser last summer. 

“You were standing there like a zombie, you weirdo.” 

I pulled the t-shirt over my head and quickly started braiding my hair, acting as though Zac hadn’t interrupted my private moment. I felt shaken, but I guess I had felt that way since the moment David had put his hands on me. I wondered if it would ever actually go away. 

“You’re the weirdo,” I retorted. I knew it wasn’t very original but I wasn’t doing well with thinking on my feet. 

I heard Taylor coming up the stairs. “So are we going to the pool, or what?” He asked as he came into my room and flopped down on my bed.

“If Cricket would go ahead and finish braiding her hair we could get going.” 

“Zachary, I’m not sure when it became your goal to pick on me today but I really would rather you didn’t.” I said, attempting to remain calm. Unfortunately, at 15, I still had the tendency to dissolve into tears when I became angry. It wasn’t a characteristic I particularly liked about myself, but here I was, my eyes brimming with tears. 

“Oh great, I made you cry. Now we will never get to the pool.”

“Why are you being so mean to me?” I asked, my voice raising up the octave while a sob caught in my throat. 

“Because you’re being crazy lately, Christine.” 

All I wanted to do was say “Yes of course I am being crazy lately _Zachary_. Four days ago we went to a party I didn’t even particularly want to go to and while you were having fun smoking your first joint, I was taken into a room by a boy I didn’t even know who pushed his mouth against mine and made me bleed and now every time I put on underwear the mere touch of the fabric makes me jump out of my skin.”

I obviously didn’t say any of those things. 

Taylor could tell that something was wrong, even if Zac was oblivious. He grabbed my arm as I began to lunge, tackling Zac like I had over every other stupid fight we’d ever started. Being three years his senior usually gave me an advantage. I pinned him under my slight frame, only because I had caught him by surprise. He quickly flipped me over and crouched over me, showing me that my days of having the upper hand in a fight were over. The weight of his hands on my shoulders set off alarm bells coursing through my nervous system. He was not sitting on my chest, but I couldn’t breathe. I let out something that was more than a scream, it was a deep animalistic cry from the very core of myself. The look on Zac’s face hovering above mine was something I will never be able to unsee. 

Taylor swooped into action, pushing my brother off of me with adrenaline fueled force. He helped me up off the ground, rubbing my back gently and leading me to my bed. “Sit here. Sit here. In and out Cricket, in and out.” His voice was muffled, the screams in my head not quite subsided. 

“What the hell?” Zac asked, dumbfounded. 

I looked up at him, my eyes bleary and bloodshot, snot running down over my lips and pooling on Ike’s old t-shirt. 

“Are you serious? Was that seriously something that just happened?” Zac continued to interrogate me, not understanding that there was no way I could answer him yet. My heart hadn’t slowed down enough to speak. Taylor stood up and grabbed Zac by the shoulders, spun him around, and gently pushed him out the door. He gave him a look that said “Not now” and closed the door behind him. He stood, looking at the closed door for a few seconds before deciding what he should say when he turned back around to face me. 

When he finally turned he took a deep breath and asked me if I wanted him to stay or if I wanted to be alone. I was still breathing too fast, still shaking a little, but I looked up at him and hoped he understood that my eyes were imploring him to stay. _Stay forever. Never leave me. Please never let me be alone again._


	4. Chapter 4

I often wonder what would have happened had I never told my brothers the events of the first night of summer. Well, everything would be different of course, but it’s dangerous to think that way. Life happens as it does, and there’s no use in looking back and wondering how one word, one touch, one glance could possibly change the course of history. What happened to me was screaming inside the cage of my skeleton and I couldn’t have kept it inside forever. It was so loud in my head. I replayed the few moments that David was so coarsely inside of me almost constantly, and it was only a matter of time before my brothers noticed the toll it had taken on me. They knew me better than anyone, and without the schedule of school and homework to hide behind, they realized that I was spending more and more time by myself in my room, not even venturing out to the tree house to be alone. 

Not to mention, now there was the moment Taylor and Zac had seen me completely lose it. I could tell that Taylor hadn’t stopped thinking about it - pulling me out from underneath my youngest brother’s body, laying me on my bed, and curling himself around me until my heart rate slowed. We stayed there all day, dozing in and out of consciousness and not speaking, our breathing seamlessly synchronized. As the sun was going down, Taylor slid his arm out from underneath me and descended the stairs to make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which he placed lovingly on my bedside table. He didn’t tell me to eat it, which I appreciated so much that it made fresh tears spring to my eyes, even though the sandwich itself went uneaten. I heard Isaac come home but didn’t raise my head or ask Taylor to go tell him not to bother me. I just laid there with my brother's arms wrapped around me until sleep took over. That night I slept the dreamless sleep of the dead. 

I woke up the next morning, my body heavy and achy, my throat and eyes dry. I had never been hung over but I thought this is surely what it must feel like. I had cried so much the previous day that I felt completely empty, and my head was absolutely pounding. I felt as though there was nothing left. Except of course there were my brothers. I needed to make sure they were okay. If it wasn’t for them I probably never would have left my bed for the rest of the summer.

I figured that Taylor would have pried himself away from the small comma of my body sometime in the middle of the night and made his way to his own room, but we were both still there crammed in my twin bed when the morning sun was streaming through my windows. He noticed me stir and woke up, immediately alert and ready to do whatever I needed him to.

“I’m starving,” I croaked. My voice was raspy and didn’t exactly sound like my own. 

“I’ll make you something. I’m going to go downstairs. Is that okay?”

My eyes narrowed. Why was he being so nice, so protective? I was his big sister, not the other way around. I was supposed to protect him.

“Of course that’s okay, why wouldn’t it be okay?” I asked cautiously. He shrugged and walked towards the door, which was usually open, ready for anyone to come in at any moment. It looked strange to me, being shut. 

As his hand reached for the knob I squeaked out his name. 

“Tay?” He stopped and turned around to face me. “I need to tell you something.”

He came back to the bed and sat down, legs crossed, our faces only about a foot apart. I adjusted myself so that I was also sitting cross legged, our knees touching.

I looked into his blue eyes and wondered if this was what true love felt like. If this was the feeling that thousands of songs had been written about. It had to be. First of all, it allowed me the first deep breath I had taken in the last twenty four hours. Additionally, it made me want to cry in a totally different way than I cried for the majority of the day before. Of course, I would never say any of these things out loud, especially to someone outside the family. It was only last year that a few girls in my grade had seen Taylor and I holding hands walking home from the park and had started a rumor that we were doing unspeakable things at home. We had both laughed ourselves silly at the accusations. It was never like that. Taylor and I just loved each other in the purest way possible, and sometimes we needed to feel each other’s hands in our own. It wasn’t the first time the town had whispered about our closeness behind our backs. And probably not the last. Definitely not the last.

I felt like I could have told him everything, and yet I felt something grip my throat, holding everything down in my stomach where it ate away at my organs. Taylor slipped his fingers through mine and said “It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone about yesterday. You’re okay.” He stood back up after softly kissing my forehead and actually left my room this time, leaving me to fester in my own secrets. 

The rest of the day I spent cleaning my room. I poured scalding hot water into a bucket and scrubbed the floor. I stripped my sheets and replaced them with clean ones from the hall closet. I took the little red area rug I had pilfered from my underneath my mother’s favorite chair out to the porch and beat it with a tennis racket I found in the garage. When I was done with those tasks I still felt like the room was not clean enough. I refilled the bucket with another round of hot water and took to the walls. I scrubbed every inch of the flowery wallpaper that my mother had plastered onto the walls of the smallest bedroom the moment she found out she was having a girl. She told me the story when I was little. There wasn’t much I remembered about her but this story was something that echoed in my brain when I looked up from a book and saw the delicate pink flowers in my line of vision.

“Of course your father told me it was too early for me to decorate the nursery. He said we had no way of knowing you would come into the world as a girl and then what would we do? Raise a boy in a room full of flowers? I just laughed in his face. Of course you were going to be a girl.” 

As though reading from a script, I would ask my mother, “How did you know?”

“Well you sat high inside of me, much higher than Isaac ever did. Oh, and I wanted chocolate constantly. I would go to the grocery and buy a huge bag of chocolate chips, telling the cashier I was baking cookies, and then I would eat off of them for the next few days. Chocolate chips by the handful. It’s all I wanted.” I would smile at this. To this day, I had a voracious sweet tooth. “But those things could have been a fluke, of course. The ladies around town would see my belly and say ‘Oh you’re having a girl, I see,’ but they didn’t know you like I did. I knew because I talked to you every night in my dreams.” 

My eyes would widen and I would implore my mother to go on. To tell me just what she saw, every detail, every moment. 

“You sat with me in a field of daffodils. So bright and so yellow that you could just feel your heart breaking.”

“What did I look like?” 

“Well you look like you do now, only older. A young woman with long honey colored hair that curled at the ends. We would talk about everything under the sun, but never say a word. It would just pass through us as though we had known each other for centuries. And as soon as I saw you slide out of me I knew it was you. I held you in my arms and said ‘Oh of course, I know you. There you are.’ You were the same girl. Of course it was you.” 

I would nuzzle my face into her mother’s side and smile contentedly at this moment of happiness peppered in with all of the tears and blank stares. There would be times while she was still alive that she would become so inexplicably angry at me for misunderstanding her or for not anticipating her words or actions. She threw a skillet against the wall one morning when I hadn’t known that she was planning on going to the library. “I shouldn’t have to tell you these things, Christine!” She yelled as she hurled the pan, precariously close to my left arm. I had muttered an apology, not quite sure what I was sorry for.

But of course, it was because my mother and I did, in fact, have to use words to communicate. I was only a young girl, who couldn’t read the subtle nuanced body language of a woman tortured by her own mind. I was not a grown up version of myself, sitting for hours in a field of yellow flowers. I was never her dream come true. At least not fast enough.

The sun was setting by the time I was finally finished cleaning the windows. I sat down on the floor, exhausted but satisfied. My stomach let out a moan and I realized I hadn’t eaten all day. 

As I made my way downstairs to the kitchen I could hear the boys talking, discussing something in concerned tones. It didn’t even cross my mind that it would be me until I stood in the doorway and Taylor elbowed Ike in the side and he stopped mid-sentence, his luminous eyes growing wide at the sight of me. I was grimy and sweaty from cleaning all day, and surely had bags under my eyes from the restless sleep and crying the night before. 

“Who wants dinner?” I asked meekly.

“We’ll make dinner, Cricket. Just sit down. You look exhausted.” Taylor said in his most maternal tone. I didn’t want him to be worried about me. I didn’t want anyone to be worried about me.

Taylor took bread out of the cupboard and heated up a skillet to make us all grilled cheese sandwiches. I predicted I could have eaten about twelve of them after forgetting to eat anything for the entire afternoon. I looked out the window, noticing for the first time that it was dark outside already. I hadn’t even left the house except to beat a rug on the porch. Where had the day gone? I felt like it had slipped through my fingers like chlorinated pool water. Or blood. Or both.

I sat at the table silently. I could tell that Zac wanted to say something, that he wanted to bring up my outburst from the day before. He kept taking in sharp intakes of air, but forgetting how to speak. How to string words together in a way that would not make me break down again. I didn’t have the courage to tell him that as long as he didn’t pin me down by my shoulders, he could say anything he wanted.

Taylor finished grilling the first sandwich and placed it in front of me. I looked down at it, the smells of of the molten cheese tickling my nose and turning my stomach. The butter he had used in the pan made the bread shiny, and I looked down at it hopelessly. I looked back up at my brothers and saw all six eyes on me, trying to figure out what in the world was stopping my fingers from picking up the food and putting it in my mouth. Even though I had been ravenous moments before, I couldn’t bear to eat now. 

“I’m going to be sick,” I said calmly. 

I got up from my chair and went upstairs into the bathroom, where I dry heaved for about an hour before collapsing on the tile floor for the rest of the evening. The faded green squares felt cool and pure on my face and my arms, and I could have stayed there forever if my big brother hadn’t found me and carried me back to my bed. My island. 

My head lolled against Isaac’s chest and I kept my eyes closed tight, pretending to be asleep. I would do this sometimes, a habit from when I was much younger that I never grew out of. The four of us would be in the tree house until late at night, long after the moon had risen and the stars had come out of hiding. It was a exceptionally cold November evening when we stayed there for longer than we had intended, telling stories and pretending like we were the last five humans on earth, bundled up in quilts and drinking hot water from a shared thermos (we pretended it was hot chocolate). No one called us home so we stayed in our little safe haven well past our bedtime. Zac fell asleep first. I closed my eyes because I knew if I was asleep too, the older boys wouldn’t try to move us and we could stay just like this for a few more hours, subsisting only on each other's body heat. 

Even though I was thoroughly exhausted from cleaning all day, as soon as my head hit the pillow, sleep escaped me. I kept my eyes closed until Ike left my room, hearing his concerned tones returning once he made it back down to the kitchen.

Later that night, I crept out to the landing with no clear intentions, it’s just where my feet led me. I looked to the left, the direction of both rooms occupied by my brothers. Three twin beds, all empty. I knew they were empty before I looked, but I looked anyway. I peered out of the window over Ike’s bed, where I saw a faint light emanating from the treehouse. Even though it was summer, I grabbed the quilt off of his bed to wrap around myself and protect my arms from the ghosts of summers past lingering in the backyard. I walked cautiously out to the tree line, where all three of my siblings were nestled high above the ground, without me. 

“Did she throw up?” I heard Taylor ask Ike, who had found me in the bathroom a few hours earlier. His voice sounded distorted, but not because it was behind the walls of the treehouse or because of the wind. It sounded like it was dripping with anger, a fierce protectiveness unlike anything I had heard before. 

“I didn’t see any vomit, but she might have flushed the toilet before I got there. I don’t know. She hasn’t really been...herself for about a week.”

“Yeah, ever since school let out,” Tay added.

I heard Zac take a few of his sharp intakes of breath, once again wondering if he should speak up and tell them about what had happened the day before. I could see, in my mind’s eye, Taylor looking at him pointedly, telling him with a twitch of his eyebrow to keep his mouth shut. 

“I’m going to tell him,” Zac finally said. Tay sighed heavily. I willed him with my brainwaves to stop him from telling the story, and furthermore to stop them all from talking about me. Maybe if I thought hard enough, they would all come down out of the tree house and find me here with a huge smile on my face and a light in my eyes and we could go about the summer as though nothing had happened. 

“Yesterday Cricket tackled me because we were having a stupid fight. Really stupid, not even worth it. But I’m...I’m getting stronger than her and I flipped her over and pinned her down and she just...she just lost it, Ike. She screamed louder than...louder than anything I had ever heard before. I don’t know what I did. She came at me, not the other way around I thought...I thought we were just playing or something.” I don’t know why, but hearing him talk about me like that broke my heart. I felt like my ribs were cracking. I could almost hear the bones snapping.

Zac’s voice stopped suddenly, as though he had heard something. I realized quickly that the noises I thought I heard reverberating from my own skeleton were actually my feet breaking twigs beneath Ike’s too big boots that I had thrown on before leaving the house. Before I could abandon them and start running, I felt Taylor’s flashlight beam on the top of my head. Three heads popped out of the door and stared down at me. I turned my face up towards them, a bashful smile on my lips. “Hi…” I said as cheerfully as I possibly could.

I was surprised when Taylor was the one to break the silence. “What are you doing out here?” 

“...All of you were gone….”

More silence hung in the air. 

“Come on up, Cricket,” Ike said after realizing that I wouldn’t dare climb the ladder without an invitation. 

Ike drug me onto his lap and made sure my quilt was tight around me, cocooning me within the fabric and his strong arms. I shouldn’t have been shivering. It was warm out. But I wasn’t entirely sure if I was shivering from a chill in the air or more from the feeling I couldn’t quite shake that this was it, this was the end. Something had broken, and I knew it would never be fixed. I didn’t have any more tears to cry, so I just sat there stone faced. I never had and probably never will hear silence quite as loud as it was that night in the tree house. It was the last night the four of us spent together.


	5. Chapter 5

Before this story gets any farther, I need to tell you about Taylor, because this is as much his story as it is mine. 

Taylor was born in the middle of March the same year that I turned one, 1957. My mother named him Jordan, after the river that flows between Jordan and Israel, in a faraway land she had never been to. He came into the world quietly, just like he spent the rest of his life. I remember one year on his birthday, all four of us piled into my mother’s bed and she told us the story of the day he came into the world - not crying, blue eyes open, watching intently. If nothing else, our mother was good at making us feel special on our birthdays. I didn’t have much time to observe, but I always felt like she had a soft spot for Taylor, and maybe it was because he was so quiet, unlike the other two rowdy boys. Our mother told us that he looked around the room curiously, and his eyes stopped when he saw the other baby (which was of course me). I don’t know how much truth there is to that story, seeing as a newborn fresh out of his mother’s womb had no way of scanning the group of people in the room with him, but I never questioned it. It felt like it made sense. She told us that she took one look at her baby boy and named him Jordan, knowing that he would be as strong and powerful as the rushing river. He, of course, never went by Jordan. He was always Taylor to us. I was in college the day I came across pictures of the actual river Jordan, and it was a sobering experience. I looked for him in the waters, for some spark of his essence. 

Growing up with Taylor was like having another part of myself. He was quiet but intuitive, and always seemed to know what was happening around us. Where he was an observer and a listener, I was the voice of the duo. I was the precocious eight year old, forced to grow up too fast, who would march up to the counter and demand a milkshake, while he would silently hand me the coins needed to pay for it. We would walk around uptown together and pretend like we were a prince and princess and this was our kingdom. We would ride our bikes around the neighborhoods as though they were our noble steeds. No matter where we were, or who we were with, he would turn his head sharply to the left to check in with me every few minutes, a habit that probably started when we were toddlers and our parents were both acting irrationally. 

There were moments where he wasn’t quiet, and those were when he was at the piano. The instrument was old, and definitely out of tune, but we played it anyway. I would sit directly to his left on the bench, and watch in awe as he took any melody I started and made into something magnificently new. Our mother is the one that taught us music, but to this day I am convinced that Taylor was born with it already inside of him. 

I think Taylor is probably the reason I have gone through this lifetime, for the most part, alone. When I was in high school and girls my age would talk about boys and getting married and having babies, I would almost always completely zone out. I couldn’t possibly imagine having another person who I shared everything with; who I went through life with. I already had one. And I definitely couldn’t imagine Taylor having another person. The thought of him getting married to another girl was something I never even allowed myself to think of during those years. I’d like to think we had an unspoken agreement that no matter what happened, we would stick together. No matter how old we got we would end up side by side at some retirement home, sitting next to each other in rocking chairs, watching the world spin, Taylor turning to the left every few moments...just to check in. 

Even during that summer, while I felt the four of us drift slowly and painfully apart, I never doubted my connection to my closest brother. We were unbreakable. I could feel him cleave to me in those last few weeks, as though maybe he knew. The day after I saw the picture of the river Jordan in my religious studies textbook, I went to the campus library to look up more. I giggled under my breath when I saw the flowing water. The comparison didn’t make sense. But of course, my mother hadn’t known the boy she named. She never would. 

I remember scanning through every waking memory I had of Taylor up until that point, closing my eyes and reliving them all at hyper speed, trying to find the moments of river in him. I found a few. But I’m getting ahead of myself.


	6. Chapter 6

June stretched on, the days running together in a warm mosquito filled haze. Isaac got a part time job at a restaurant in Uptown. I spent most of my time reading or daydreaming or thoroughly cleaning our house. I would go around the different rooms scrubbing the floors, relishing in the feeling of rag to floorboard, washing away the grime that had collected. I would scrub myself just as hard, but I never felt completely clean. I would ride my bike and end up on the other side of town, not really sure how I got there, only knowing that I had slipped off into dream world as my feet were mindlessly pedalling. I never wanted to admit it, even to myself, but David was a recurring character in my daydreams. It always left a strange taste in my mouth, and a shameful ache in my stomach. It was after these strange, painful fantasies that I would return home from my bike ride and pace the hallway between my room and Ike’s, wondering if it was time to rally the troops and send them into battle for me. I was in the thick of one of these dreams when I fell off of my bike, having hit a big crack in the road. I tumbled over the front of my handle bars, skinning my forearms and my chin, my knees screaming from the sting of gravel rubbed into to raw flesh. I laid there for a moment, whimpering quietly, and looked up at the sky, which was the same brilliant blue it had insisted on being every day since the final school bell. 

After mustering the strength to sit myself up and collect my bike, I looked around and noticed I was on the north side of Westerville, outside of town. After getting my bearings, I was sure I knew where I was, even if I didn’t get to this side of town very often. My knees ached and my whole body was shaken too much to get back on my bike and ride home, so I stood my bike up and started walking. 

I heard a car coming up behind me and turned to see a truck that maybe at some point in its life was red, but was now an incredibly worn salmon color. It had seen its better days. The truck pulled up beside me and slowed to a halt, the driver leaning over to roll down the passenger side window. A pair of familiar brown eyes met mine. 

“Cricket?” 

I mustered an apologetic smile. 

“Hi Dad.” 

***

I haven’t told you much about our father simply because he wasn’t around very often.

I clambered into his truck as he loaded my bicycle into the back. When he got back in and we started down the road, he kept looking over at me to see if I was going to start the conversation or if he would have to. The way he turned his head every few minutes reminded me of Taylor, a tick I hadn’t realized they shared. 

The earliest memory I have of my father is from when I was four. My mother hadn’t gotten out of bed for days, and he carried her downstairs and placed her in a chair on the front porch, making sure the sunlight was tickling her face and arms. You see, I think my dad really did love my mother, and I think she loved him. They met when they were fairly young, in the same little town that they would live in for the rest of their waking days. There were a few pictures of their wedding lying around, and it was only later in life that I did the math and realized she was already 3 months pregnant with Ike by the time they got married. Maybe it’s the daydreamer in me, but I would like to believe that he was not the only reason that the wedding took place. 

There are those few memories of my father being tender towards my mother but the main reason I think that he really did love her is that it was only after she died that he became the father that the four of us grew to know. Ike knows better than anyone since he was the oldest, and he can confirm that while he was never the gentlest human being, something snapped within him the moment he found my mother bleeding out. A part of him disappeared, and was never found again, even though he relentlessly searched for it at the bottom of countless bottles. 

His days looked like this - he would work all day, come back into town and go straight to a bar for a few hours, come home and crash, wake up the next day and start all over again. He was a high functioning alcoholic and I’m sure he did his job perfectly fine (after all he hadn’t been fired in over twenty years), but asking him to give up his nightly ritual and do anything after he got home was met with either stone cold silence or unwarranted rage. In some ways we prefered to be left alone. It was what we were used to. But that doesn’t mean when I saw girls walking around town with their fathers I didn’t feel a pang of intense jealousy. Every time he unnecessarily yelled at us, or the one time in my memory he slapped my oldest brother right across the face for talking back to him, I wondered what he was like before everything happened. Before my mother became too sad for this world and before she decided he would be better off scrubbing blood out of the tub. 

“Thanks for the ride,” I finally mustered. 

“What the hell were you doing over here anyway?” He asked, directly after me, as if he had been waiting with those words in his mouth until I gave up and broke the silence. 

“I was just riding my bike. I don’t know,” I confessed, truthfully. I didn’t know what I was doing.

“Why aren’t you in school?” He asked, checking his watch.

“It’s summer, Dad.” 

“Oh. Right.” 

More silence followed, the truck jostling us as I picked at the fresh wounds on my hands and arms.

“You’re going to have to clean those when you get home.” 

“I will.”

“I know.” 

This was how most conversations with my dad went. Nothing flowery or emotional. Just a few syllables back and forth. He was no story teller like the woman he had married. 

“Everyone doing okay?” He asked. I knew somewhere in there, somewhere deep in the core of himself, he still cared about us. He was our father, after all. 

“Yeah everyone is fine. Ike got a job. School is out, so we’ve been keeping ourselves busy.” 

“Good. Good.” I thought maybe that was it for this conversation. We still had a few blocks to go before we made it home, where I was sure he would drop me off and head to the bar. “Have you been getting outside? Going to the pool?” He asked, surprising me with more questions. 

“Um...yeah. I mean...I’ve been riding my bike obviously,” I didn’t mean to sound smart, and worried suddenly that he would take it the wrong way. Instead he smirked and let out a small chuckle. 

“Yeah, I can see that,” he said sarcastically as we pulled into the driveway. 

I hopped out of the truck, forgetting that my bike was in the back. 

“Christine,” he yelled out of the driver’s side window.

“Yeah Dad?” For some reason, I turned around hopefully, thinking after our short conversation he might say he loved me or something stupid like that. 

“Your bike.” 

“Oh. Thanks.” 

He got out of the truck, keeping his door open, and handed me my bike quickly and awkwardly. 

“See you later, kid.” 

***

“Whoa, Cricket, are you okay?” Zac greeted me dramatically, seeing my skinned arms and knees. 

“What? Oh yeah, I’m fine. Just fell off of my bike.” 

“Do you need help?” 

“With...what?” I asked. The boys had fallen into the habit of coddling me ever since my breakdown and the night in the treehouse. I didn’t know what I had to do to convince them that I was fine and everything was normal (even though, I suppose, it wasn’t). It wasn’t their help that I necessarily needed. I pushed passed Zac and went into the bathroom to clean my wounds. Ike would be getting home soon from the restaurant and I didn’t want him to see me and panic. It looked worse than it felt. 

“Can I come in?” I heard Taylor ask from the other side of the door. 

“Yeah, sure.” I replied as I wet a washcloth in the sink and started dabbing my forearms. 

“Ouch,” he commented when he saw me. 

“It’s not that bad. I’ll be fine. Will you grab me the gauze from the hall closet?” 

“Yep.” 

The few seconds it took him to grab the bandages and come back into the bathroom was all it took for me to lose every ounce of resolve I thought I had since promising that this would be a secret I would keep just for myself. Maybe it was that I had just spent some time with my father and he had been kind, and called me by my real name. Maybe it was because the pain on the heels of my hands was the first thing I had really felt since that night. As soon as I saw my brother slide back through the door and hand me the gauze, I knew I couldn’t hold it any longer. The weight of the secret was too much. 

“Taylor I need to tell you something,” I said quietly.

“Yeah?” He asked, probably not thinking it was going to be something from weeks in the past. He sat casually on the edge of the bathtub. 

“Remember the night of that party? That we went to?” 

“Yeah of course I do.” 

“Um….” I wondered how I should proceed. To this day I’m not sure I worded it in the best way. “Well that night, I met a boy.” 

“Right. David. You told me the next morning.” 

“Yes. David.” I realized that I hadn’t said his name out loud since I had spoken to Taylor about it, only hours after it had all happened. 

“What about him?” 

My hands and voice were shaking. I had given up trying to clean my scrapes but I was still clutching onto the wet washcloth. I took a deep breath and continued.

“That night...that night he took me into a room and um…”

I could see the creases in Taylor’s face deepening with every word I said. At this point, he knew where this was going. 

“And he what?” He asked.

“He...um...he forced himself on me...I guess...” 

“Like he…”

“Yes.”

“....All the…”

“Yes, Tay..” Silence followed, completely different from the silence I had just experienced with my father in the truck.

“I will kill him, Cricket.” 

And for a moment, I believed him.


	7. Chapter 7

The morning of my mother’s funeral, tensions were running high in our household. Two days after we found her dead, we were expected to put on our Sunday best and stand in a perfect line while the priest talked about a woman he didn’t even know. Zac wailed at the top of his lungs every time we tried to usher him out of the door, Taylor and I stood on the porch and waited for the rest of the family to come down, our faces dry. I hadn’t cried that day and didn’t plan to. The last week of my mother’s life had been so stressful, so emotional, so frustrating. I had cried enough already. Instead I stood there pulling on the black dress that my father had taken me to buy because I didn’t own anything that was appropriate to wear to a funeral. I didn’t even have any dresses at that point. We were all growing so fast it seemed like a waste to buy something I would be too big for in a month, when I could just wear my brother’s old shirts and trousers. I certainly didn’t feel very comfortable in the dress, but then again, I probably wouldn’t have felt very comfortable in anything that morning. 

There weren’t many people at the church that day. A few of my father’s co-workers and their families, some kids from school forced by their socially conscious parents, and a smattering of people that, like my parents, had grown up in Westerville. I guess they felt a strange sense of loyalty to the woman they had known since she was small.

She looked so tiny in her casket, which we closed for the ceremony after peeking in ourselves. We wanted to see her one last time, so while Dad was in the back talking to the priest and telling him some small details of the woman we were all grieving, Ike herded us up to the box and opened the lid. Taylor hoisted Zac up so he could see and I stood on my tip toes. The funeral home had known we had asked for a closed casket ceremony, so they didn’t waste time or the money we didn’t have making her up. She lay there, but “peaceful” is not a word I would attribute to the body in front of me. She still had quite a bit of pain on her face, frozen in the moment of despair that led her here. Her long, amber curls hung around her shoulders, which Dad had hastily covered in a simple nightgown he found after hauling her naked body out of the bathroom. I snuck a look down at her arms, which for some reason I expected to still be bleeding. Impossible, of course. The wounds were there but clean and dry _because a dead body doesn’t bleed, idiot,_ I thought to myself. I had the impulse to reach out and touch them, but before I even moved, I felt Taylor’s hand on my arm as though he had heard me thinking about it. She didn’t look completely unlike all of those late mornings I would pop into her room to see if she was still breathing, only to find her in a deep sleep. We heard our father’s footsteps and quickly closed the lid, scrambling back to the front pew. He sat down beside Ike, right on the aisle, and didn’t even look over at us when he said “I looked earlier, too.” We breathed a collective sigh of relief, thinking he might scold us for looking. I was sandwiched in between Ike and Taylor, but I wanted nothing more than to climb up on my Father’s lap and have him hold me until this was all over. I had never done anything like that, and never did. But it was a nice thought. 

It was a very simple funeral; we didn’t have money for much else. There was no visitation or reception, just a quick mass followed by the burial. We rode in the back of Dad’s truck to the cemetery, four somber kids dressed in black wondering what was supposed to happen now. When they lowered her into the ground I couldn’t stop watching a bird with a broken foot who was hopping around the adjacent plot. Taylor nudged me and nodded his head toward our mom, the dead woman in a box, but I was fascinated by this disabled animal instead. I didn’t want to look at that box anymore. That wasn’t our mother. 

When people hear that my mother died when I was so young, they put their hands on their chest and say “I am so terribly sorry” as though it happened last week. When I was younger, and I had less tact, I would respond with “What are you sorry for?” as though I was looking for someone to take the blame, to say it was them that killed her, someone who actually was truly sorry for what they had done. But, my mother killed herself. No one handed her the razorblade. 

Now I just respond with “It’s okay.” Because it is. I’ve lived more of my life without her than with her. My mother is a memory, and that is how I’ve known her for the majority of my time on earth. And that _is_ okay. I don’t even know what I would be like if she had lived longer. Every single thing that has happened to me since that day has been informed by the fact that my mother is dead. For a year after the funeral I would wake up every night around 3 AM and quietly make my way to my father’s room. I mastered the art of turning the doorknob in a way that would not wake him up, or even make him stir. He usually was long gone into drunken slumber, which helped my cause. I would stand by his bed for about an hour each night, making sure he kept breathing. In, out, in, out, in out, inoutinout...until I was completely convinced that he would keep breathing through the night, and wake up in the morning. He caught me for the first time eleven months to the day after our mother’s death. His eyes batted open and he saw me there, like a child ghost, standing inches from his bed. He grunted sleepily and pushed me towards the door, grumbling “go to sleep, Cricket.” 

Everyone expected me to take it the hardest, being the only girl, but I don’t think that I took it differently than any of my brothers. Ike had spent the longest with her, so I guess he knew her the best. They weren’t exceptionally close. Taylor was the one that took care of her on her dark days, bringing her coffee from the kitchen and making sure she had enough reading material. If anyone were to take it hard, I suppose it would have been him. Zac can barely remember her. When it comes right down to it, none of us really knew her anyway. She was gone before we even arrived.


	8. Chapter 8

I’m not sure what I expected, telling Taylor that day in the bathroom. Ike was at work, and that fact probably contributed to my willingness to spill my secret. It was in that moment that I did see the powerful, protective river flash across his face, his blue eyes flickering with rage. Calm and collected Taylor, threatening to kill a boy he didn’t even know. I wasn’t entirely sure how to take it. I wasn’t sure what to expect next. I had just wanted to say what I needed to say, and move on. Continue cleaning my scrapes. That was a silly dream, of course. 

Before I even realized what he was doing, Taylor was halfway down the driveway on his bike, undoubtedly making his way uptown to talk to Ike. I didn’t even have to ask where he was going, I knew as soon as I saw him lunge towards the door. Zac ran out onto the porch yelling “Where are we going?” thinking this was just another summertime adventure. I didn’t go after him right away. I needed to finish cleaning myself up before I went anywhere. I needed to finish this task before moving on to wrangling my brothers and convincing them that everything was fine.

After bandaging my arms and knees, I walked slowly and deliberately back outside and mounted my bicycle, the same one I had fallen off of not even an hour before. Zac was still confused, no one giving him the answers he desired. “Seriously, Cricket, where are you all going?” 

“I have to find Tay.” I said stoically. I was trying to formulate a plan in my head. What I would say to my two protectors when they questioned me about the night of the party. I had told Taylor so that I could get it out of my body and move on, not so that action could be taken. But I knew Ike better than that. He would want to do something. I just wasn’t sure what that something was yet. 

“Can I come?” Zac asked sweetly. 

I looked at him solemnly. I wanted to protect him. I didn’t want him to be a part of this. I never wanted him to feel pain ever in his life. But I knew that was a fool’s mission. 

“Sure.” 

The two of us rode into town. It was the end of June, and things were not done changing. 

***

I spotted Taylor’s bicycle outside of the restaurant Ike was working at, just where I had expected it to be. Someone else might have doubted their instincts, but I knew exactly what he was thinking. I usually did. I leaned my bike against his and told Zac to wait outside. 

“No one is going to steal these, it’s Westerville. Everyone knows these are our bikes.” 

“Just please wait out here, Zac. Please.” I begged. 

He heaved a deep sigh before saying, “Fine.” 

I walked in and the bell above the door rang innocently.

“Hey Cricket! Isaac is out back. Your other brother is here too. I don’t...actually know if it was Taylor or Zac, I’m sorry. I always have trouble with those two,” the busboy, whose name was Calvin, and who I had only spoken to maybe once in my life, directed me towards the back.

“It’s Taylor,” I said hurriedly as I walked towards the back of the restaurant, passing the kitchen and pushing the back door open with the strength only an older sister could muster. I saw them talking over the trashcan that Ike had just emptied into the dumpster, both with lines of worry etched across their faces. 

Ike’s face snapped towards me, probably thinking it was his manager about to reprimand him for wasting so much time taking out the trash. He blanched at the sight of me. 

“This really couldn’t wait until he got home?” I asked sternly, surprised at the authority in my voice. Neither of them answered me. 

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Ike asked quietly but sternly. 

I looked at my oldest brother in disbelief. He didn’t understand. He didn’t know what it was like to feel dirty and never be able to wash it off of your skin. 

“Cricket, why didn’t you tell us?” He asked again, his voice raising quickly. 

“I don’t...I don’t...know,” I sputtered, my resolve weakening with every pause.

“WHY DIDN’T YOU--”

“Stop YELLING at me!” I interrupted him. I didn’t know why he was attacking me, and why Taylor wasn’t stepping in to tell him to calm down, his usual role in these fights. 

“We tell each other everything, Cricket, that is the promise we all made,” he reminded me, his voice still a little too loud for my liking. This alleyway was shared. 

He was right, of course. The night after mom’s funeral, we had gathered in the tree house and made a pact that no matter what happened, no matter where life took us, there was no room in our world for secrets. The four of us would tell each other everything, because we were all we had. We had already noticed dad shifting what little attention he gave away from us. We were each other’s only friends, and because of that, no bit of information would be spared. Ike had found the razor blade in Dad’s room and with it we all cut our palms and smashed our hands together, a ritual that was superfluous given that we already had the same blood flowing through our veins. But it felt right. It felt ceremonial and important and frankly how else were we supposed to make the agreement unbreakable? It felt good, if not a bit over-dramatic, to use the weapon that ended our mother’s life in order to seal us together. 

Memories of that night flashed through my brain as I looked up into Ike’s eyes and searched for the reason I had broken our pact. I never wanted to be the one to betray my brother’s trust. I desperately wanted to defend myself, to tell him that technically I didn’t lie, I just didn’t tell them right away. I looked down at my feet and my mind slipped away and I thought back on the night it happened, and I replayed it all, changing the ending so that as soon as David covered my mouth with his hand I bit his fingers, screaming at the top of my lungs. My brothers all heard me from the floor below, knowing instinctively that it was their sister. They burst into the room, finding me fighting David off, scratching his eyes out. Ike pulled him up by his collar and threw him down the stairs, the rest of the party descending on him as though he was a monster they had been searching for. No matter how hard I thought about it, I couldn’t will myself back to that moment. I looked back up and saw Ike staring at me expectantly. 

“I’m sorry,” was all I could muster.

I remembered that Zac was out front, and turned around, without saying goodbye, to go collect him and go back home. I didn’t want to be here anymore. The cracks that had appeared in our family were deepening by the second, and if I possibly could, I would outrun them. 

“Let’s go,” I said, grabbing Zac’s arm and walking quickly down the street.

“We rode here,” he reminded me. 

I let out a grunt of frustration as I turned on my heel and gathered my bike, not waiting on him before I pedalled away. 

***

I waited impatiently at home for my brothers to arrive back for dinner. I paced back and forth from one side of my bed to the other, to the window, to the door, and back again. The floorboards creaked every time I stepped on the one right by my dresser. I still didn’t have a plan, a way to tell my brothers what had happened, to make them understand, to not yell at me. I only wanted them to love me just like they always had. 

I made my way towards the kitchen and crumpled on the bottom stair, burying my head in my hands. I guessed I would just stay there until my other brothers returned. Where was Taylor? What was he doing? I could have sworn he was right behind us when we rode away from the restaurant. My sibling senses were telling me the whole way home that we were only a few minutes ahead of him, but it looked like this was one of the very few times in my life I had been wrong on that front. 

I heard Zac pounding on a box upstairs, creating a rhythm. I could almost see his head bobbing up and down, the beat moving through his bones, his long hair in his face. I longed to be him. He was three years younger than me, and later in our lives that interval of time would seem insignificant, but that summer it seemed to stretch between us, as long as the country roads that wound through town. 

For the first time in my life, my brothers were not everything I needed. I sat on the stair and desperately wished for a mother. 

Thirty minutes later, the two missing pieces of our quartet came through the door. 

I looked up at them, extracting my head from the cradle of my hands. 

“We have to tell Zac,” Ike said solemnly. I wanted no part of it. I stood up and walked back up into my room. They didn’t need to discuss details. Ike would tell the remaining brother that I had been raped, and Taylor would sit there quietly, and I would be up in my room reading “Two Towers” and pretending like none of this had happened in the first place.


	9. Chapter 9

Looking back, I wish I had been present for the conversation. Instead, I locked myself in my room, desperate not to relive that night if I didn’t have to, and honestly hoping they wouldn’t even talk about it. When it came down to it, it was my story to tell, not Ike’s. They didn’t have to tell Zac. The didn’t have to talk about it at all. But then I remembered the pact I had broken, the trust I had in some way betrayed. I wish I had pressed my ear to the floor, given that my room is right over the kitchen. I wish that I had snuck down the stairs and lurked in the shadows of the stairwell. I wish that I could have stopped their stupid plans. 

The twenty four hours that followed the conversation in the kitchen are hard to extract from my well of memories. I remember raised voices from the floor beneath me, and plugging my ears so that I could focus on my book. I remember falling into a fitful sleep and waking up the next morning, just like always. I remember noticing Zac and Taylor deep in conversation in the front yard, and Ike not coming home after work. I remember being left all alone in the house. I remember the phone call. 

***

The Columbus police called the house at 12:38 am the next morning. I hadn’t fallen asleep yet, wondering where in the world my brothers were, once again pacing my room. I ran downstairs to the kitchen when I heard the phone ring, clutching it with both hands and answering breathlessly. 

“Is this...Christine Hanson?” A man asked, taking a moment to check the note he had scribbled down. 

“Yes, this is she.”

“This is Officer Montgomery from the Columbus Police Department. Two of your brothers are here at the station.”

“Where is Taylor?” 

The officer paused, surely going over what he had just said to me in his brain, replaying the words he had spoken and scanning them to see if he had said it was Taylor that was missing. He hadn’t.

“He...he’s in the emergency room.” 

“Why?” 

My breathing quickened. I felt something wrap around my stomach and heart and lungs and every other internal organ. 

“He was in an altercation with another boy. He’s...um...he has been stabbed, Christine. I’m so sorry, um...Isaac told me to contact you first.” 

“Is he alive?” I asked, my voice jumping up the octave. 

“He is. He’s in the intensive care unit.” 

“Can I talk to Ike, please? Isaac?” I could barely get the words out. I could barely take in enough breath to make the sound needed for that short sentence. 

I heard a rustling on the other line while the police officer handed the receiver to Ike. 

“Cricket…” 

“I’m coming I’m...I’m on my way,” I sputtered. 

“Cricket you have no way to get here.”

“I’ll go get Dad. We’ll take his truck.” 

“Okay.”

“Can you tell them to bring you there too? I need...I need you.” 

“Yeah, I’ll ask them. Take down this number, so you can call when you get there. If you can’t find us.” 

He gave me the number before I realized that I wasn’t holding a pen and that my hands were shaking wildly. I set down the phone and rummaged through some drawers until I scrounged up paper and a pencil and scrawled down the number.

“Ike?” I whispered. 

“Yeah?”

“Did you see it happen?” 

“Yeah, we were all there. It’s okay Cricket just get here. Okay?” 

“Okay.” 

***

I didn’t realize that I was still in a t-shirt and Tay’s too small pajama bottoms until I was halfway down the road that led into town. I had rushed to hang up the phone and ran outside to grab my bike, shoving my feet into the first pair of shoes I that fell in my line of vision (they happened to be Zac’s sneakers, which made pedalling easier since we were about the same size at that point). My heart was racing, and my peripheral vision became blurred, a haze of unimportant visions that would only distract me from the only thing I needed or wanted to do -- to get to the hospital in Columbus. To get to Taylor. But first, I would need to find my father. 

I pedalled as fast as I could, the scabs on my knees tearing open. The night might have been clear, the moon lighting the way down the road flawlessly. The night might have been overcast and foggy, the hazy, yellow light of the streetlamps casting an ominous glow. There might have been a chill in the summer air, or it might have been stagnant and sticky. The crickets could have been playing a symphony, but I didn’t hear anything other than the thrum of my eardrums, the blood pounding through my veins. I wanted to scream into the night sky, like an animal injured at the hands of an unknowing hunter, call out to my brother who was miles away and who would never have a chance at hearing me, but my voice was cruelly silenced by the knots in my throat. I needed to be with him. I needed to be with him. I needed to be with him. 

When I got to the bar where I guessed my father was drinking (it was his usual haunt and I couldn’t imagine why he would be anywhere else...I thanked the powers at be for the predictability of life), I leapt off my bike and flung it into the gravel outside the front door, the back wheel still spinning as I lunged inside. The bartender glanced over at me and immediately stopped pulling the beer in his hands. 

I must have looked wild. I must have looked like an untamed, feral child, bursting into this establishment, a look of purest panic in my eyes. A hush fell over the room, the jukebox innocently continuing to play. It didn’t know any better. 

“Christine?” 

The bar was not packed by any means. Eight...maybe ten middle aged and older men, drinking away the worries of their day late into the night. It hadn’t taken long for them all to fall completely silent and turn to the young girl in their midst. The young girl who was panting, probably foaming at the mouth, wild with worry. I looked at my father, unable to form the words necessary to detach him from his barstool and get in his truck. 

“Christine, what is it?” He tried again. 

“Dad….” I began, my breathing getting quicker yet again. I began to hyperventilate.

He swooped down off of his stool and knelt before me, grabbing my by the shoulders. “Christine listen to me,” he said forcefully. Looking back, I realize that when they were younger, my father surely had to talk my mother down from many panic attacks. He fell back into the process easily. “Listen to me. Look at me, Cricket.” 

I shut my eyes tightly and opened them again, trying my best to focus in on his. They were brown, a deep muddy color that I knew so well. 

He held my face in his hands and would not let me look away. “Breathe in,” he commanded, and I did. “Breathe out.” We went through the cycle five times until I found my voice. 

“Tay...Tay is in the hospital, Dad. In Columbus. We have to go get him.” 

“What...what are you talking about, Cricket? Your brothers are home.”

“No they aren’t, they...they went to Columbus earlier...tonight and they got in a fight,” I stumbled over the words, taking huge gasps of air throughout. 

“Is he okay?” He demanded. 

“No.” 

Dad let out a huge sigh, which seemed wrong compared to my breathing pattern. He seemed disappointed that I had interrupted his nightly ritual, and that we were going to have to make this trek. I wanted him to be as worried, as panicked, as I was. He spun me around and shoved me towards the door, back out into the night. I looked back quickly at the bar, for the first time realizing that there had been other people present for that little episode. “Just like her mother,” they were surely thinking quietly. 

It took about 25 minutes to get to Columbus, but my father drove way faster than any speed limit would have normally allowed, and we reached the city in just under 15. I glanced at him gratefully, hoping he would understand the look in my eyes. We pulled up to the hospital and I leapt out of the truck before it even finished moving. I burst through the doors with vigor but quickly stopped in my tracks. I looked around cautiously and realized I had no idea how hospitals really...worked. My existence consisted of our two story house and a circumference just big enough to fit the tiny town of Westerville, Ohio. True, I had made a few trips to Columbus in my lifetime, but only ever to visit Ike at college. I was suddenly surrounded by people who had never met me, who were looking at this disheveled girl in pajamas. I had no idea where my brother was. Where any of my brothers were. The other two might be here or they might still be at the police station, and for that matter I didn’t know which police station they had been taken to. I didn’t even know if I had gone through the right door, if I was actually in the emergency room or if I had come in the completely wrong way. I looked around and didn’t even see my dad. I felt the panic rise in my throat yet again. 

Before I lost my breath, I stumbled up to the desk and made eye contact with a nurse passing in front of me. She was clearly on her way down the hall but stopped when she saw my pleading eyes. 

“Are you looking for someone, sweetie?” She asked kindly. 

“Yeah um...my brother is here? I need to see him.” 

“What’s his name?” She asked as she sat down on the stool behind the desk, flipping through files even though I hadn’t even given her a name yet. 

“Taylor, his name is...his name is Taylor.” 

“Taylor what, sweetie?” She coaxed.

“Hanson. Jordan...um his first name is Jordan, though. Jordan Hanson.” 

“Okay let me see here….” she trailed off as she rifled through more papers. I didn’t know exactly what she was looking for, but I wished she would hurry up. “Okay, it looks like he’s in room twenty five. Are you by yourself?” 

I certainly hadn’t thought I was by myself, but when I looked behind me my dad was nowhere to be seen. “I’m with my dad but I don’t know where he went…”

The nurse looked at me with a concerned gaze. This was obviously troubling. This wild girl barging into the emergency room and demanding to see a boy with no adult and a blazing look of worry in her eyes. “Please let me see my brother,” I said a little too loudly. 

She sighed and stood up from the stool. “Alright, I’ll take you back there.” She came around the desk and took my hand, which attempted to flinch away from her. I took one more crazed look back towards the entrance, but I didn’t see my father anywhere. I decided not to worry about that. Just get to room twenty five, get to room twenty five, get to room twenty five. 

I noticed the room numbers ascending as we walked down the hallway. I tugged my hand away from her grasp and ran full speed to Taylor’s room. The door was open. 

I saw him lying there motionless, his eyes closed, his skin pale. He looked so small.

***

When we were five and six, Taylor and I climbed a tree that was not in our yard. It was the perfect climbing tree, and we had been eyeing it for months. Down the road from our own backyard, it belonged to a couple with two young girls, one who was my age. We were in the first grade together but we had never spoken. I always walked home flanked by Ike and Tay, so we never even bonded while walking down the road. But I knew she had a great tree in her yard. A tree I wanted to conquer. And where I went, Taylor usually followed. 

We waited patiently until a day we saw the four of them pile into their camper and head out for a weekend trip. They seemed like they were so happy. The two parents made sure their daughters had everything they could possibly need to keep them entertained on the drive packed neatly in their satchels. The oldest daughter’s hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, and she was wearing a perfectly coordinated summer outfit and spotless white sneakers. The younger one zipped around the front yard, her unruly curls catching the sunlight, her small backpack trailing behind her. We waited about fifteen minutes after they pulled out of the driveway, just to make sure they hadn’t forgotten anything and were planning on turning back to fetch it. We ran around their house and into the backyard, pausing to look in the windows, curious as to how a family who seemed so happy on the outside lived. I peered in and saw the tidiest house I had ever laid eyes on. I lingered a few moments until I felt Taylor pulling on my arm, making sure I focused on the task we had come here for. 

I turned towards our challenge. We looked at each other and smirked, ready to ascend. We ran towards the tree and jumped up the first few branches, climbing like squirrels, hungry for the heights. I heaved my weight up to the next level, straddling the branch that had, only a few seconds before, been above my head, feeling like a champion. I heard a snap and a thud. I looked down at my fallen brother. He looked so small. So helpless. 

There were a few moments of held breaths and heavy heartbeats when nothing happened. Time stood still as I waited for my brother to move. The seconds stretched on like endless summer. I was about to give up hope when he stirred and sat up, grinning up at me. 

“You okay?” I called down to him.

“Yeah, I’m fine. You did it!” 

I looked around. I had. I was at the top of the tree, or at least sitting on the last branch that was sturdy enough to hold my weight. I could see pretty far from up here. To a six year old who had never been very far off the ground, the view was dazzling. 

***

I tiptoed over to my brother, the speed and panic abruptly drained from my body. I approached him quietly. Cautiously. I didn’t know if the sound of my foot steps or the pop of my ankles would cause him any more pain than he was already in. I didn’t want to find out. His breathing was shallow. I didn’t know if it was okay to touch him. I stood by his bedside frozen, looking down at his face, waiting for him to sit up and grin at me. He had fallen out of a tree, that was all. He was fine. It was only a few feet down to the grass. I was only six years old, and he was only five, and five year olds are incredibly resilient. 

I’m not sure how long I stood there, but he didn’t open his eyes. It might have been a few minutes or a few years, but eventually, I was joined by the rest of the family. 

My brothers acknowledged me, and my father came and went. I felt like I once again had cotton wool wrapped around my head, tucked into my ears and swaddling my eyes. I couldn’t quite make out anything clearly, as hard as I tried. I barely felt Ike’s arm on my shoulders or Zac’s hand slipping into mine. I could hear him say “we didn’t know, Cricket. We didn’t know,” but just barely, as if he was a few rooms down the hall, his voice wafting through the hospital air that was thick with worry. I didn’t sit down. I think my knees forgot how to bend. I kept my eyes on Taylor, willing his to open. He had fallen out of a tree. That was all. That was all. That was all.


	10. Chapter 10

####  Part Two: July 

_“I didn’t mean to yell. She thought I was mad at her, and I wasn’t. I’m not.” Isaac said after a few moments of thick silence. The boys were about half way to Columbus and there hadn’t been much talking on the way. Only short comments and monosyllabic responses. The plan was set. No need to discuss. “I’m not mad at her I’m mad at the situation. At him.”_

_“She knows that,” Taylor replied, looking out the passenger side window dreamily. He caught Zac’s eyes in the side mirror and flashed a smirk. Zac looked like an excitable puppy, watching the scenery flash by and breathing quickly, just happy to be asked along on this mission. Taylor returned his gaze to the sky, which was changing colors rapidly as the sun was setting. They would be in Columbus right at the end of dusk. But for now, it was the golden hour._

_That was Taylor’s favorite time of day. It seemed like the whole world became magical and that anything was possible. He and Cricket used to play pretend for hours each day, and everything seemed so heightened around this time. They would jump down from the treehouse and scurry through the woods (which now didn’t seem like an enchanted forest so much as just a few trees that happened to be close together), two knights on a noble mission. He longed for those days._

_He attempted to send his sister a telepathic message. He closed his eyes and crinkled his nose and forehead, sending all his energy back to Westerville so she would know they were alright. They would be back late that night. He promised. He knew this wasn’t really a power they possessed, but it filled him with a sense of calm to do it. His heart hadn’t slowed since the moment in the bathroom when Cricket had told him what David had done to her. He watched both Isaac and Zac’s eyes turn wild when they had been told. He watched as a plan formulated in Isaac’s head._

_Three brothers off to defend their sister’s honor. They didn’t want to do anything crazy, just scare him. Maybe throw a few punches. Make his nose bleed. Give him a black eye that would easily heal in a few weeks time. It was three against one, and all of them had the unexpected strength and brazen confidence of teenage boys._

_Isaac had worked quickly, calling a few of his friends who lived on campus and finding out where David lived. It was almost too easy, but he thanked his acquaintances profusely, suddenly benefitting from his charismatic talent for making friends. He whispered plans to Taylor and Zac in their shared bedroom that afternoon, and they agreed easily. And now here they were, only hours later, driving down a country road into town. Taylor wished Cricket was with them. They felt incomplete._

_Taylor knew he was to blame. He went over the events of the party in his mind again and again and again, replaying the moment he left Cricket’s side. Replaying walking over to Zac and taking a hit off a joint, surprisingly not his first. He replayed watching his little brother sit himself behind a set of bongos and charm the entire room. He joined in, their harmonies perfectly intertwining. He looked around the room, wondering where Isaac was. It was magical when the three of them all sang together. Cricket would beg for it some nights when she couldn’t fall asleep, right after their mother died. They would sing her lullabies until her eyes slammed shut._

_Maybe if he had stayed by his sister’s side, his hand on the small of her back, or his fingers laced in hers, none of this would be happening. They wouldn’t be fracturing apart, she wouldn’t be disappearing into herself, and they definitely wouldn’t be in a car without her, off to fight some boy they didn’t even know._

_He knew that Isaac and Zac loved Cricket, of course. But they didn’t love her like he did. If he was going on this mission by himself, he had no doubt that he would kill this David guy. He never wanted Cricket to hurt. He never wanted her to cry._

_“You okay, bud?” Isaac said from the driver’s seat, pulling Taylor out of his thoughts._

_“What? Oh yeah, totally. Sorry. Just zoning.”_

_“Yeah none of us really got that much sleep last night,” Isaac rationalized._

_“Yeah.”_

_Taylor saw the city in the distance and took a deep breath, questioning their plans for the first time. He felt a pang of guilt, or maybe sadness. He couldn’t quite place the emotion. All he knew was that he missed his sister. He missed her so much. It had only been a couple hours._

***

I had been lying down next to Taylor for a few hours, his breathing still shallow, his skin still clammy. Isaac and Zac came and went, Dad stayed out in the hallway, sitting on a bench a few doors down from Taylor’s room. Everyone kept trying to persuade me to leave for a few minutes, go get a soda or a snack, go outside for some fresh air. I kept my fingers laced with Taylor’s, never once looking up from his face. I whispered softly into his ear, “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re okay. We’ll go home when you wake up. We’ll go home and sit in my window. We’ll sleep in the treehouse. We don’t have to go back to school in September. We’ll live in the woods, Tay. Just you and me. Just you and me.” 

I murmured my irrational plans until I fell into a dreamless sleep, my face nuzzled into his neck. 

I’m not sure what time it was when I finally woke up, but when I did, my brother was gone. His body was still there, but I knew as soon as I opened my eyes. Taylor was gone. 

I pried my hand from his, and sat up on my elbows, looking over at his closed eyes. 

“Tay?” I tried, knowing I would not receive an answer. “Tay?” I tried again, shaking his shoulders gently. “Taylor? Tay….Tay….Taylor.”

I kept repeating his name, my volume and desperation increasing with every passing second. Eventually the rest of my family came inside the room, drawn by my shrieks. I was over my brother, straddling him, his face in my hands. I shouted until my throat was raw. My tears splashed down his cheeks. A nurse appeared at the door, and, seeing me descend into madness, rushed down the hallway to assemble the team needed to separate me from the person I loved the most. 

Isaac grabbed me underneath my armpits, but I flailed my arms wildly, causing him to loosen his grip quickly. 

Zac muttered, “Cricket….” knowing that it was lost in the cacophony of my screams. I slapped every hand away that came near me. My father, the only one that could possibly overpower me, wrapped his arms around my entire body, covering my mouth with his hand. I bit down hard and he grunted, tightening his grip. Before I knew it, I was wriggling from his grasp, and falling down onto the ground. When I attempted to lunge towards Taylor’s body again, both Zac and Isaac grabbed one of my arms and kept me back, disguising their restraint as the comfort of a sibling. I resented the fact that they were all bigger than me now. My body went slack in their arms, my vision clouded with tears. 

_He looked so small._

I refused to leave the room until they took him away. Even then, I asked the doctor if I could go with him to the morgue. He looked at my father, who shook his head. 

“That’s not Taylor, Christine.” 

“I can’t leave him,” I shrieked through sobs that shook my entire body. I looked over at my brothers, surprisingly dry-eyed, for support. I received none. “I can’t...I can’t leave him, Dad.” 

“Come on,” he said, grabbing my arm. “Let’s go home.” 

I automatically gravitated towards Ike’s car, but my father guided me to his truck. He looked over at Ike and Zac, nodding at them to take the car. I climbed into the passenger seat and curled up in the corner of the seat, facing away from my dad. I didn’t want to look anyone in the eye, especially not my father who didn’t even seem to be grieving. His son had just died. He should be wracked with guilt or overwhelming sadness or _something._

“Cricket…” He said quietly. 

I didn’t respond. I just let the tears fall freely, pooling on the pajama bottoms that I was still wearing. They were Taylor’s. What a cruel joke.

“Cricket, do you know why your brothers were in Columbus?” 

I nodded, almost imperceptibly. I hoped he didn’t see me, but he looked over just in time. 

“Can you tell me, please?” 

Nearly a whole minute passed before he asked again.

“Cricket? Can you please tell me?”

I shuddered with a fresh sob. Without turning to look at him I sputtered out the words, “They were there because of me.” I heard the gravel crunch. We were home.


	11. Chapter 11

_“Tay?” I called out into the house as I ran down the stairs. I hadn’t seen my brother in a couple hours, something that, unless we were in school, I didn’t particularly care for. I found him at the piano, an artifact from the time when our mother was alive, and hopped up next to him, taking my place to his left near the lower keys. Taylor spent a lot of time at the piano, especially in the winter months when there weren’t as many opportunities to stay outside for hours until the sun went down, the rays casting a golden glow on the yard and our bare arms._

_I listened to the melody he was playing carefully, a few measures over and over until they sounded just right. My brothers were always writing, even Zac. It was a talent I didn’t necessarily possess, although I supposed I had never really tried. I just watched in awe as they did it, sometimes together, sometimes on their own, and smiled supportively._

_“Do you like that?” Tay asked, wrenching me out of my thoughts._

_“Yeah, I do. It sounds...it sounds exactly the way I feel in winter. Does that make sense?”_

_“Yep.”_

_I smirked, figuring that’s what he was going for anyway...I had just put words to it. We always seemed to feel calmer in winter. Everything bad happened in summer, at least for us, when the air was charged with the threat of storms and heat lightning. Our mother died on a miserably warm day, sweat pouring off of our faces as we watched our father lift her body from the bathtub._

_Tay hated summer thunderstorms. They made him jumpy and anxious. Just last summer there had been a brutal one, that caused the tree that grew beside our house to topple over onto the roof. The wind whipped around our windows, and I heard my brother at my door, breathing heavily with concern, causing me to put down my book and lift my blankets, inviting him to come into my bed to hide from the thunder. It was moments like these that I remembered I was the older sister. We moved through this world together, as equals, hand in hand...so it was easy to forget. But as I wrapped my body around his, my arm around his waist protectively, I remembered that I was his defender._

_I hummed into his ear, making sure he heard every note. I was an okay singer, but I didn’t like to show off. I let my brothers be the musical ones. Sometimes, when Tay and I would sit together at the piano, we would sing duets together, our voices blending flawlessly. I would sing mindlessly while I was cooking or walking home from the pool, but nothing with my full voice. Unless it was just me and Taylor. Taylor was the only one that really knew what my voice had the capacity to do._

_I felt Tay’s fingers intertwine with mine, and he sighed deeply, relaxing his weight into me. Our bodies fit together so perfectly, so effortlessly. Sometimes I really did question the birth dates we had always been told. Surely we had been joined together in the womb until the world forced us apart. Right?_

_He shifted his body, flipping it around so that our faces were centimeters apart. He grabbed my hips gently and pulled me close, so that there was absolutely no space between our bodies. Even though it had been sticky and warm outside all day until the storm came crashing through the sky, we stayed under my quilt, as though the fabric would protect us from the whole world outside this house...the only place we had ever known._

_“I’m scared, Cricket,” he whispered, his words tickling my cheek. I moved my hands up, allowing them to graze his body, and held his face tenderly._

_“It’s just a storm, Tay. It will pass.”_

_A few hours later, once the storm had ended, we pried our bodies apart. There had been crashes and flashes outside, each one making Taylor’s whole body spasm with fear, but now the sun was shining yet again. I heard Zac and Isaac yelling to each other somewhere outside. I went to my door and looked back at my little brother, who nodded, letting me know it was okay to leave him alone. I galloped down the stairs and out the door and found my youngest sibling on top of our house, Isaac calling to him from the ground. The tree had crashed into the left corner of our roof._

_“What is he doing?” I asked, surprisingly not as worried as I probably should have been._

_“The tree fell.”_

_“Yeah I can see that. What is Zachary doing on the roof.”_

_“Hey Cricket!!” Zac called from the heights. I could see that he climbed out of his bedroom window and scaled up to where the tree had fallen._

_“Be careful!” I cried._

_“Yeah, I will be. Just gotta see the damage!”_

_“Mmhmmm…”_

_“Holy shit, Zac, what are you doing?!” I turned to see that Taylor had joined us in the front yard._

_“Calm down.”_

_Zac spent the next week or so fixing our roof and cleaning up the mess of branches the storm had left in it’s wake. It was kind of amazing to watch. Here was this boy, who spent hours on top of our house, making sure that the rain wouldn’t get in. It was the first glimmer of man I saw in him._

_There were a few more storms that summer, and every time, like clockwork, Tay would show up at my bedroom door. I would lift my quilt up and beckon him over. We would melt into each other’s bodies, and feel safe. We were all we had. And that was okay._

***

“Hey, Cricket? Do you...um...do you want to come down and have something to eat?” 

I raised my head a few inches from my pillow. No. Not my pillow. I was in Taylor’s bed. 

Zac was at the door, beckoning me to come downstairs and eat a plate of casserole. There were so many casseroles. How many casseroles did one family need, even if one of their own had just died?

I lowered my head back down, breathing in deeply. I could still smell him in the pillow case. He was still there. I felt the vibration of Zac’s footsteps coming near me, and the weight of him sitting down at the foot of Tay’s bed. He placed his hand on my leg and I kicked him away sharply. 

“Hey. C’mon.”

“Leave me alone Zac, please.” 

“You don’t even have to sit at the table. You can...you can sit on the porch or on the couch or...or I’ll bring you up a plate? Do you want me to bring you up a plate?” 

“Fine.” 

I closed my eyes tightly as I waited for him to leave. In the few days following the hospital, I had taken to sleeping in Taylor and Zac’s shared room. Zac didn’t seem to mind. I doubt he wanted to be in there alone at night anyway. 

It was three in the afternoon and I was slipping in and out of sleep. I spent a lot of time in this bed, wrapped up in Taylor’s sheets, the same ones he was sleeping between only a few nights before. 

Returning home from the hospital, without Taylor, felt like every bone inside of me was cracking one by one. Every step I took towards the front door was another finger, another toe, my leg, my ribs, my neck. I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to do this. I couldn’t do this. 

I felt Zac and Isaac both slip their hands into mine. They had beaten us home and were waiting in the yard. I couldn’t even look them in the eye. 

It wasn’t long until news got out around town that the Hanson boy, the one with the piercing blue eyes and golden hair and impish grin, had been killed. When our mother died, we didn’t get much sympathy, other than what was polite and expected. People had been watching her disappear for years. But Taylor was just a boy. All of a sudden, all of Westerville was grieving for their lost angel, and stopping by our house to drop off food prepared by the countless mothers that were not our own. Every single visitor brought a fresh onslaught of tears to my eyes, so eventually, I quarantined myself in my new bedroom. 

Zac and Isaac spent hours in the room with me, sometimes taking turns, sometimes together. The three of us were the only ones who truly understood what the other two were going through, so any moment we could spend together, we did. When Isaac had to go to work, I yearned for him. When Zac left to go make us dinner, I looked at the door helplessly until he returned. But mostly I just missed Taylor. I sat on the bed and missed Taylor. 

Up until this moment, I had been trying to accept the fact that our little world was changing. 

But now...now my world was shattered.


	12. Chapter 12

The funeral was the complete opposite of the only other one I had ever attended. The town came together to give my brother a proper send off. The mothers of high schoolers pounded the pavement, raising money for the fallen angel of Westerville High. We arrived at the church, our eyes bleary and unfocused, dressed in new clothes. There were hundreds of people gathered at St. Paul’s cathedral, girls from my grade weeping loudly into their hands, boys standing stoically, with concern etched on their faces, tears silently forming in their eyes. I looked around, utterly confused. These people didn’t even know Taylor. They had no right to cry. 

We sat in the first pew, the casket threateningly close. If I wanted to, I could walk right up to it and get in with my brother, recreating the way we slept so many nights in one of our twin beds together. He looked so beautiful, his golden hair lying perfectly on the little satin pillow, his face smooth as marble. It was cruel having the lid open so that I could see him. It was taunting me with his likeness, even though I knew I would never be able to see his eyes look at mine ever again. I would never be able to lean my head on his shoulder when we sat in my window, or grasp his hand as we ran across the yard to the treehouse. As I was having these thoughts, sobs erupted from my body in a silent moment of prayer. The whole church turned their attention to me. If I was a well adjusted fifteen year old, I would have been embarrassed. 

One if his teachers gave a short speech, saying that he was kind and attentive and talented, all things that I already knew. There was no one else to speak, so Mr. Callahan had stepped forward. The three of us couldn’t do it, and our father didn’t ever have much to say. I couldn’t even imagine him walking up to the ambo and delivering kind words about his son. I glanced over at him, but I was unable to read the emotions on his face. Surely there was something like sadness there, right? I didn’t know. 

We slowly made our way to the graveyard right outside of town. Taylor was buried next to our mother. The sun was so bright I squinted the whole time. The crowd dispersed before they began to lower the coffin, but I stayed until the began shoveling the dirt back into the hole. I sat on the grass and watched, mindlessly ripping weeds from the ground and twisting them in my fingers. Finally I felt a shadow fall across me and I looked up, seeing my father standing over me, his hands in his pockets. 

“Let’s go.” 

We made our way to the truck silently. Dad pulled out of the church parking lot and turned the opposite direction from our house, but we barely even noticed until he pulled into the Westerville Grille. 

“I figured you might want something other than casserole. My treat.” 

I scanned the small diner for a table or booth that would accommodate our family of five, before realizing we only needed four seats, a thought that caused my stomach to lurch. I mindlessly found Zac’s hand near mine and intertwined our fingers together. His hands felt different than Taylor’s. A bit clammy. But he held on for dear life. 

We scooted into a booth by the window and ordered all of our Grille usuals. My dad got a hefty turkey club sandwich, Ike got a patty melt, and Zac and I both ordered cheeseburgers - all with fries. Taylor would have gotten a tuna melt, but I didn’t mention it. We were all thinking it, anyway. 

“Y’all want milkshakes, too?” Dad asked before the waiter could turn away. 

“Wait, really?” Zac responded, incredulous. This was the most attention our father had ever given us. 

“Yes, really.” He said, nodding to the waiter, who fished his pad of paper back out of his apron. 

“Um...I’ll have Strawberry,” Ike said hesitantly. “Cricket?” 

“Chocolate, please.” 

“Me too.” 

“I’ll have vanilla,” Dad added, and the three of us shared the smallest of smirks with each other. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had a milkshake. It felt wrong to be excited. 

We ate in silence, only breaking to answer Dad when he asked how each of our respective sandwiches tasted. We slurped down or shakes greedily, not knowing when the next treat of this kind would come our way. 

When we were done eating, we piled back into the truck, full and sleepy, and made our way home. I didn’t want to go back into the house. I felt like the air in there was too stagnant, thick with words we were too scared to say to each other. When we pulled into the gravel driveway, I leapt out of the truck and headed to the back yard, making a beeline to the treehouse. I already had my book in hand (I didn’t leave the house without one) but I doubted that I would be doing much reading in the days to come. I climbed the ladder, slipping slightly on my way up because I wasn’t used to wearing a dress. I sat down in a patch of sunlight and closed my eyes. I wanted so desperately to talk to him. So I did. 

“Um...Hey Tay? Your um...your funeral was today.” I felt silly speaking out loud, so I kept my eyes tightly shut. The sun on my face felt so warm, so soft. It made me think of him. But...most things did. “A lot of people were there that we don’t really know. So many...so many girls were there.” I let out a small laugh. “I don’t know any of these girls! I don’t think you would either. Well...we probably know of them, but I’m sure we’ve never talked to them.” 

I realized quickly that I was using we, lumping the two of us together lazily. 

“Anyway...um...Dad took us to the Grille afterwards, which threw us all for a loop. I think he feels really sorry for us. The whole town does. Um…” 

I cleared my throat and opened my my right eye slightly, checking to make sure I was still alone. I crawled over to the window and peered down, just to make sure Ike or Zac wasn’t sneaking up on my one sided conversation. I didn’t see anyone. 

“Um...so...I know it’s only been a couple days but I miss you a lot. Probably too much. I don’t know...I don’t know exactly where you are or what you can hear or see but…”

My voice caught in my throat. I thought that maybe by this point, I had cried all the tears inside of me. But there were always more to be shed. There were always more. 

“...But I hope you know that I love you so much and...and I don’t think I’ll ever stop missing you, okay? Mom was different. I don’t miss her anymore. I don’t know if I ever really did. But...I don’t know if I can do this, Tay. I really, really don’t know yet. I know I have Ike and Zac and...and thank God I do but…” 

I couldn’t find anymore breath to speak. I collapsed in on myself, curling up in the corner of the treehouse, unabashedly weeping. This wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. 

***

_I closed my eyes tightly and listened to my brothers whispering in the hallway. I would pretend to be asleep until I knew they were ready._

_The sun was streaming through my window, throwing patches of light across my floor. I peeked out at the sky, and saw that it was a brilliant blue. Perfect for a birthday swim, I thought dreamily. If that was what my brothers had planned for me, that is. They always made my birthday special, even if it was in the silliest of ways._

_The whispering died down and I heard them scurry away. I threw off my blankets and stretched, excited for what the day had in store for my new, fifteen year old self. I walked to the door and flung it open, yelping in glee. The entire hallway outside of my bedroom was decked in leaves and branches and vines, and at my feet were three gorgeous, leather bound books. I gasped in delight when I leaned down and saw that they were the Lord of the Rings trilogy. My favorite books, which I had been checking out from the library again and again from the time I could read well enough to understand them._

_“Happy Birthday, Cricket!” I heard three voices say in unison. I looked up and saw three blonde heads peeking from Ike’s door._

_“We each got you one book of the trilogy!” Zac exclaimed. I rushed over to them and tackled the entire group, causing us to fall to the ground in a heap, laughing and the outpouring of love._

_“It’s Rivendell, isn’t it?” I said, motioning to the hallway._

_“Yep,” Taylor responded. I could tell from the glint in his eye it had been his idea. I had told him countless times about the fictional lands found in the pages of books, my favorite always being Rivendell. I loved walking through the woods out back and pretending I was there, befriending elves during a quest just as epic as Frodo’s._

_“We’ll have to take it down tonight,” Ike said diplomatically, to which we all nodded in agreement. “But first, we breakfast with the elves.”_

_The three of them scurried downstairs and retrieved scrambled eggs and toast, which we ate together on the floor of the hallway, underneath the indoor branches. The rest of the day passed in a blissful daze. We spent most of the day at the pool, and returned home sunshine tired and deliriously hungry. We threw together a meal and had a picnic out in the backyard, finishing up just in time to run inside and take down the branches adorning the hallway. We chased each other around the yard with them and couldn’t seem to stop laughing. After showers were taken (with a bubble bath for the birthday girl) we all piled into my bed, our hair still wet and our cheeks shiny, and I read the first few chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring to my brothers, who listened attentively. I fell asleep that night happier than I could ever remember._

_Maybe it’s a trait I inherited from my mother, or maybe it’s because I have walked through this life with a bit of melancholy always in my soul, but there is an undertone of sadness when joy spills it’s rays of light all over my day. There is a part of me that always knows that it will never be like that again._

_And it wasn’t._


	13. Chapter 13

Mornings were always the worst. 

The sun would spill into the room I now shared with Zac, waking me up slowly. I would stretch under the covers and just for a few seconds before I opened my eyes, I would forget that I was about to wake up to a grief laden house and an absent brother. The pain of realization never lessened. Every day it hurt just as much. 

There was a small blessing, I supposed, in all of this happening during the summer. It allowed us to stay in bed until our hungry stomachs forced us to leave the safe confines of our blankets. I didn’t have to look anyone in the eye, except my brothers and occasionally our father, who was now spending more and more time at home, a fact I wasn’t sure any of us were happy about. I didn’t have to deal with teachers putting their hands on their hearts when they saw me walk down the hallway, or girls I didn’t even know pretending to be sad. At least not yet. I had no idea what would happen come September. 

I moved through the house like a ghost. I took to wearing Taylor’s clothes. Not even the ones he had passed down to me, but his entire dresser became mine. I wore the shirts he wore most often, smelling them as they passed over my head, hoping the catch a whiff of him before my own smell took over the fabric. I stopped braiding my hair and let it hang loose around my shoulders. 

The night before my birthday I fell into a fitful sleep, and was plagued by dreams of the beginning of summer, a time that seemed like it was years in the past. In my dream I walked down the hallway of the stranger’s house, following David, the boy that would eventually rape me and kill my brother. I followed him into the room, and it was as if I could feel his weight on top of me, grunting softly in my ear. The room dissolved and I was in the treehouse. I saw blonde hair hanging around my face, and looked up into blue eyes, a warmth filling the pit of my stomach. I smiled up at my brother and laughed...causing me to rise from my sleep gasping for air. 

When I sat up in bed, I looked around confused. It had been so real. I felt Taylor’s hair tickling my cheeks. I looked over at Zac, who was still sleeping soundly, and threw off my covers. I ran barefoot to the treehouse. He was there, I knew it. I felt his hands pressing my arms down, I felt his breath on my neck. He was there. I could catch him, if I ran fast enough. Of course, when I climbed the ladder and toppled onto the floor of our not so secret club house, I was alone, with only the moonlight to greet me. 

“Tay?” I whispered to the shadows. It had seemed so real. “...Taylor??” Nothing. Of course. 

I curled up in the corner of the treehouse and fell asleep, just in case he decided to show himself. I didn’t dream again that night. 

***

“I don’t know, Zac, just find her!” I heard Ike say loudly from a distance, jerking me awake. I was curled like a cat in a patch of morning sun, my body aching from sleeping on the hard floor. 

“Criiiiiiicket???” Zac yelled, trampling through the trees that lined our yard. “Cricket where are you?” I heard him stop right below the treehouse, surely realizing where I was before I even had a chance to answer. 

“Are you up there?” He said, softly, considering he had just been yelling seconds before. 

“Yeah.” 

“Why?” 

“I don’t know. Couldn’t sleep.” 

“So you slept in there?”

“Yeah.” 

“Oh. Well...we made you breakfast. Come on down.”

I peeked down at my baby brother, who looked up at me expectantly. I couldn’t help but smile, just a little. At least they had remembered. 

I hopped down, skipping the last few rungs of the ladder, and landed right next to Zac. 

“Happy Birthday, weirdo. Hey look. You left the house.” 

“Thanks, Zac. Come on, let’s go eat.” 

***

Zac was right. The last time I left the house was the funeral, and the few moments afterwards when I found myself in the treehouse, looking for my brother. In truth, I hadn’t gotten out much all summer, but I just had no desire to. Bad things were out there. Boys with hungry hands and alleyways and fist fights and hospitals and police departments and funerals. At home I could escape to middle earth for hours at a time, and try my best to forget the dark feeling that was always pressing down on my shoulders. 

It was my sixteenth birthday and my brothers hadn’t gotten me anything. They apologized profusely and I tried my best to convince them it was fine. 

“Do you want to do something fun? We could all take a bike ride or go to the pool or something. I don’t have to work today,” Ike suggested, attempting to sound cheerful. 

“No, it’s okay. We don’t need to do anything special,” I replied, as I picked at my eggs.

“But we should do something Cricket.” 

“Seriously, Ike. It’s fine.” 

My older brother let out a sigh, and studied my face before changing the subject. 

“So...how does it feel to be sixteen?” 

“Pretty much the same as fifteen did.” 

“Right. But this year is gonna be fun. You’ll get to drive soon. You’ll be a junior, which is way better than sophomore year. You’re practically a big dog now.” 

I snorted softly, and looked up at him. I didn’t want to bring down the mood this early in the day, but I couldn’t help myself. 

“No, Ike. It’s not going to be a fun year. My brother is dead and I couldn’t care less about driving.” I stood up suddenly and marched upstairs, climbing into Taylor’s bed before hot tears sprung to my eyes. 

I woke up a few hours later from my crying induced nap and rubbed my face sleepily. I ran my fingers through the knots in my hair and found a pair of jeans on the floor, slipping them on absentmindedly. I needed to go find my brothers and apologize for snapping at them. It hadn’t been fair, and I hated being mean, especially to them. We had to stick together. 

I shoved my hands in the pocket’s of Taylor’s jeans, assuming his bashful posture, when my fingers hit a piece of paper. I pulled it out and unfolded it, seeing Taylor’s handwriting, which caused me to sway. It was such a tangible part of him, here in my hands. It made my whole body shake. 

_I’m looking for a song to sing_   
_I’m looking for a friend to borrow_   
_I’m looking for a radio_   
_So I might have a heart to follow_

I looked around, as though I would see him behind me, smirking with delight. I laughed, a true full throated laugh, for the first time in weeks. I found it on my birthday. He was giving me a present. He had to be. 

I folded the piece of paper back up carefully and tucked it into the pages of Two Towers. I would be back for it in a little while. I needed to make things better with my living brothers, before I tried to figure out what Taylor was attempting to tell me.


	14. Chapter 14

_Goodbye, four-leaf clovers_   
_Hello gone awry_   
_Don't cry; the fight ain't over_   
_Unless you let it pass you by_   
_I'm looking for a song to sing_   
_Looking for a friend to borrow_   
_I'm looking for my radio_   
_So I might find a heart to follow_   
_I've never been this_   
_Longing for your lovin'_   
_I've never been so_   
_Wearin' down to nothin'_   
_I've never been just_   
_Looking for a reason_   
_So maybe you've been thinkin'_   
_Of me_   
_Oh, you've been thinking of me_

I was absolutely giddy with this new message from Taylor, and my other brothers noticed a change in me. The handwritten lines of poetry, which I was sure were lyrics scrawled out for me to find, placed in the very pair jeans I would slip into on my birthday was a smile from him. I knew it. 

It was only a short bit of text, but it was enough to send me into a frenzy. The next morning I left the house, and went on a bike ride to Hoover dam. The air wasn’t muggy yet, and the sun hadn’t reached it’s zenith, so I zipped down the road comfortably, sweat not yet forming on my temples. I left a note on the kitchen table, just in case my brothers woke up and wondered, yet again, where I was. I pedaled quickly and took my hands off of the handle bars, flinging them to the side with reckless abandon. It felt good to be alive (which was a thought I hadn’t had in a weeks...maybe even months). 

When I got to the dam, I parked my bike and leaned over the barricade, watching the water rush down into the river forcefully. When I was little, and the the four of us would take bike rides together all over town, the rush of water would intimidate me. It was so magnificent. It was the largest and most forceful thing I had ever seen, and it humbled me in a way children don’t experience until they take in the magnitude of the sky or the height of a mountain or the view of a city from a skyscraper. When I was older, I would learn that this wasn’t the only Hoover Dam, and it wasn’t even that big compared to other wonders I would experience as an adult. But to me, this was extraordinary. 

I took a few deep breaths, feeling the energy in the air created by the water’s force. I felt Taylor all around me, which made me smile even bigger. He was calling to me, and I knew I would figure this out. I mounted my bike, recharged from the fresh air, and pedaled into town. I haphazardly left my bike outside the library, the front wheel still spinning, and leapt up the stairs. The main room was cool and dark and Shirley, the librarian, nodded a greeting at me. It had been a while, but during school months I spent countless hours in the this very building. I didn’t own many books, which is why I depended so heavily on the library. 

I wasn’t quite sure where to begin. How does one research “contacting the dead” when the only resource you have is the Westerville Public Library? I glanced around. It was still morning and the main room wasn’t incredibly populated. There were a few older gentlemen sitting by the window reading the paper. Shirley, dutifully sorting through a donation of books. And then me. Standing in the middle of the room, looking around with a frustrated expression already spreading across my face. I knew that if I asked Shirley for help, she would know exactly what I was up to. My brother had just died, and I didn’t have school to use as an excuse. I couldn’t even pretend like I was researching a paper or project. So I would have to go it alone. 

I dove into the card catalog, trying any combination of things I thought might bring me luck. I took down any book from the shelf that could possibly hold a clue. I brought over a few at a time to a table by the back windows and rifled through them, trying to scan each page as best as I could before stacking them on the return cart for Shirley to sort later. I made a mental apology to her every time I brought a fresh load over, knowing that I was making quite a bit of extra work for her. I wrestled a notebook out of my backpack, and started taking notes when I found a few passages that looked helpful. I watched a splash of sunlight move across the table slowly as I worked. I didn’t even think about my brothers, or if they were wondering where I was. I kept my head down and read. 

“What are you doing?” A quiet voice asked me about three hours into my quest for information. 

The sudden question startled me, making me jump in my seat. I looked up and met eyes with a girl who was one grade younger than me. Her name was Susie, short for Suzanne. She was the only person I knew who spent as much time in the library as I did. I didn’t know if I would exactly call her my friend, but we did read a lot of the same books, and shared many smiles across this very room. 

“Oh, um...just trying to research some stuff,” I replied, attempting to cover up the books in front of me, which would surely give the topic away. 

Susie pushed her glasses up her nose. She had long black hair which was usually tied back in a tight ponytail, and was short for her age. She stood her ground, even though I was attempting to give her the signal that I wanted to be left alone. She peered down at the books in front of me before I could cover up every title. 

“Are you trying to talk to your brother?” She asked plainly. Surprisingly, it didn’t sound accusatory, maybe just a bit curious. Excited, even. 

“What? No. I um…” I trailed off as she sat down across from me, reaching for a book near the top of the pile. It was called _Spirits in the Modern Age_ and looked promising on the shelf, but wasn’t giving me much to work with. 

“I could help you. If you wanted.” 

I looked at her incredulously. Why would she want to help me? We barely even knew each other. We had spoken a few times, but only about books and whether or not we should read a certain series. But she seemed genuine. 

“Um...really?” 

“Yeah.”

“Okay. I’m just...I didn’t really know where to start so I just found any book about ghosts or spirits to see if there was anything in them about contacting or speaking to them. I’ve found a few things, which I’m writing down here. So if you um...if you find anything just show me, I guess.” 

She nodded stoically, and immediately picked up a book that I hadn’t yet cracked open. _Ghosts of Ohio_. We read in silence for a couple minutes before she looked up from the page. 

“You miss him a lot.” 

“...Obviously,” I retorted, not trying to sound as vicious as the word came out. But she took it in stride, smirking at me over the book and diving right back into the paragraph she was in the middle of. 

 

***

 

Susie and I spent the rest of the afternoon in the library, until our stomachs began rumbling and we both realized we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I checked the clock on the wall and saw that it was closing in on 4pm. 

“Hey,” I said, blinking through the sun that was now in my face. “You wanna get some food?” 

“Sure,” Susie said with a shrug. I had no doubt that she could have kept reading well into the evening. 

We stacked the remaining books on the return cart and waved to Shirley as we walked out the door. The air had turned sticky in the afternoon sun, and sweat immediately started pooling on my back. 

“Wanna go to Dairy Queen?” I suggested, knowing that it was cheap. I had a few dollars in my backpack, and as much as I didn’t want to spend them, I also didn’t want to invite Susie over for peanut butter sandwiches. 

Susie nodded and started walking. She was quiet and took everything in before ever speaking, which reminded me of Taylor. It was jarring having this new, female companion by my side. I decided then and there that I liked Susie. She kept up with me as I walked, even though she was a few inches shorter than me, and didn’t insist on small talk or incessant chatter like so many other girls our age. 

I marched up to the Dairy Queen and ordered us two burgers and two cokes, handing over my wad of dollar bills to Silas, the boy behind the counter. He was Ike’s age, and knew who I was immediately. I had seen him at Taylor’s funeral, a few rows back with his mom and dad, looking somber. 

“Hey Cricket,” He said as he counted my money. He looked at me with pure pity in his eyes, an expression I would get to know very well come September when I was surrounded by people who felt sorry for me. 

When the food was ready he called my name and handed me the tray through the window. There was chocolate sundae on the tray as well, right in the middle of the burgers. 

“I didn’t order that.” 

“I know. Don’t worry about it. On me.” He said with a wink. 

I trapped Silas’s grey eyes with my own, filled with question. “I don’t want it,” I said plainly. 

“If you don’t eat it, it’s gonna melt. So just...eat it, Cricket. It’s fine. It’s free, just take it.” 

“But I don’t want it. I didn’t pay for it.” 

“That’s...that’s the point.” 

“She doesn’t want it Silas.” I heard a surprisingly forceful voice chime in behind me. I looked back and saw Susie standing their defiantly, one eyebrow raised as if to say “just try me.” 

“Fine. God, you both are a bunch of freaks,” he mumbled as he threw the sundae in the trash. 

“What did you call us?” Susie asked, her voice raising in pitch and volume. 

“What? Nothing, I didn’t say anything.”

“You most certainly did. You called us freaks. Nice way to treat your customers, Dairy Boy.” Susie reached up and grabbed our burgers and drinks, and marched away rebelliously, leaving me to gallop away from the window to catch up to her. 

“That was amazing, Suz!” I remarked, still in awe. 

“He’s a dingus. I’ve never liked him. He thinks he’s so cool but he works at the stupid Dairy Queen.” 

I giggled, causing her to break through her aggression and laugh along with me. Here I thought this girl was shy and quiet, and yet she had just stood up for me for no reason. We walked a few more blocks and then found a nice shady spot under a tree to sit and eat our food. We continued to make fun of Silas, laughing loudly at our own jokes. 

“As though an ice cream sundae was gonna make up for the fact that your best friend just died. God, what an idiot.” 

The laughter caught in my throat and I looked at Susie appreciatively. She was right. True, my brother had died, but he _was_ my best friend. I didn’t know how to go through life without him. 

“So how are you gonna do it?” She asked, steering the conversation back to what we were reading about in the library. For a moment I thought she had read my mind, and was asking how I planned to live through this sadness, but I quickly realized she was referencing all the books we had been scouring only an hour before. 

“I’m not sure yet. I feel kinda silly doing a seance, you know?” 

“Yeah...and feeling silly can hinder the whole experience, at least that was what I read. You have to truly believe you can do it.” 

A few moments of silence passed while we chewed our food. I drained my coke and looked over at my new companion. “Maybe a ouija board.”


	15. Chapter 15

It was early evening by the time Susie and I walked our bikes home, the sun already beginning to set. My house was on the way to hers, so we made our way down the road together, chatting quietly while pushing our bikes. I waved goodbye to her and turned onto our gravel driveway. I saw Zac on the porch, concern on his young face. 

“Where have you been?” He asked when I was close enough to hear him. 

“I’m _your_ older sister, Zac. Not the other way around.” 

“I still want to know where you were. We haven’t seen you all day.” 

I parked my bike and shoved past him through the door and into the house. 

“So?” He called after me.

“So, what?” 

“Where were you?” 

“I was at the library.” 

“Who was that with you?” 

“My friend Susie.” 

“Oh, please.” 

“What?!” 

“Your friend Susie? You’ve never spoken to her before.” 

_Damnit_ , I thought to myself. Sometimes it didn’t help to be quite so close to my brothers. We all knew exactly what the others did or said, except for Isaac, who had been away at college. 

“So we...so we became friends today. I don’t see what’s so wrong about that,” I fired back at Zac from the second floor landing. 

He took a breath in to speak but was defeated before he could even begin. He realized he was being a little too overprotective. I turned on my heel and scurried to our now shared bedroom, knowing that he would be coming in with his tail between his legs soon enough to apologize. 

Like clockwork, I flopped down on Taylor’s bed and Zac came trailing in behind me, already looking apologetic. He sat on the foot of the bed, the shadows playing across his face, and waited for me to speak first. 

“Yes?” 

“I’m sorry, Cricket. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.” 

I smirked at my little brother, who I knew better than I knew myself. “It’s okay. I know why you’re being protective of me right now. I understand. But I just...I needed to get out of the house for a little while, you know?”

“Yeah, I get it. We’re not doing a great job of that lately.” 

He was right. I barely ever left this room. Zac had taken on the responsibility of going to the grocery or the drug store whenever we needed something. He rode his bike all the way to the other side of town for errands. He kept finding things to fix inside the house, putting his grief into hammering nails and replacing the back porch’s rotted wood beams. He cooked for me, too, even though it was never that good. But food had lost most of it’s taste anyway. I ate enough to keep living, and often I wondered what the point of that even was. 

Isaac went to work the lunch shift at the restaurant almost every day, and came home around five every evening. I wondered if he wanted to spend some evenings away from us, but he never did. I supposed he would be leaving soon enough. And then it would just be me and Zachary, for the rest of the school year. I shivered at how quickly we were dwindling. 

“Hey Zac?” I said, after he had gotten up from the bed and started making his way downstairs to start dinner. The burger I had wolfed down with Susie still sat in my stomach like a rock, and I thought about telling Zac to skip cooking tonight. But my words took a different turn,. 

“Yeah?”

“What happened that night? No one told me.” 

I saw his face immediately change to complete and utter pain. He didn’t want to remember that night any more than I did. But I had been left out for the first time in our lives. I needed to know. 

“Are you sure?” 

“I think so, yeah. I think I’m ready.” 

Zac licked his lips and sighed heavily, his gaze darting all over the room. His hair was getting so long, I noticed. As though he could read my mind, he picked up one of my hair ties from the dresser and pulled his mane into a ponytail before adjusting himself so he was right in front of me, both of us sitting cross legged, as though we were looking at ourselves in a mirror. Taylor and I used to sit like this all the time. I couldn’t remember Zac and I ever doing it. His brown eyes were jarring. 

“Maybe Ike should tell you.” 

“You’re already right here, and I asked you.” 

“But…”

“Please, Zac.” 

“Okay, okay.” He took another deep breath. He couldn’t look me in the eye, but I knew I had convinced him. “So...after you told Taylor, he told Ike, and they both told me about what happened. And we were all furious, obviously. Mostly Tay. He was so angry, I’ve never actually seen him like that. He was mad at the guy but also just really mad at himself for not staying with you at the party, which...you know...we would have normally done.”

I nodded. He was right. We didn’t spend a lot of time apart, so the fact that I was alone at the party at all was a rare occurrence. We always knew where the other was. 

“So anyway, he felt really guilty. I don’t know...if that makes a difference to you or not but, we all did.” 

It was amazing to me how the pain of that first night of summer had been completely flooded by the pain of losing Taylor. The party seemed like a lifetime ago. 

“Ike thought he could probably track David down, and he did pretty easily. He knew who the guy was. Um. So he called a few friends and asked around, and he figured out what dorm he was in. He was staying at school for the summer so that made it easier. We didn’t even...we didn’t even really agree or make a plan we just all knew we had to go to Columbus and kick his ass for doing that to our sister.” 

I couldn’t help but smile, just a little. I could tell that this was hard for Zac to recount, so I placed my hand on top of his, applying enough pressure that he knew I was there, supporting him, urging him to continue. 

“And I swear, we were just...all we wanted to do was throw a few punches, break the guy’s nose. It wasn’t supposed to get out of hand. We’re just...we’re just teenagers, you know? It wasn’t supposed to...end that way. So um. So we get out of the car and the sun is almost all the way set and we parked a few blocks away from the dorm just so we wouldn’t look suspicious. Or something, I don’t know. Anyway, we walk over to the dorm and we see David coming up the street towards us. It was perfect timing. I actually had just been thinking about how we had no idea where he was or if he was even home and then there he came, walking straight towards us. Ike called out his name and he looked up at the three of us, super confused because...well who wouldn’t be, I guess. Ike said, ‘no one messes with one of our own,’ which...actually made me laugh a little because it sounded so intense and dramatic. So Ike winds up for a punch but then Tay rushes forward and tackles the guy. Just wailing on him. Punch after punch after punch and I’m thinking to myself there is no way this guy is going to fight back but...I mean Taylor is small. Was small.” 

I winced at his change in tense, and so did he. He continued. 

“And he’s yelling ‘get off of me, get off of me’ and Tay just keeps going, and blood is everywhere. He’s going crazy, Cricket. So Ike pulls Tay off of him and...I mean none of us knew. How could we have known that he would have a knife on him?”

My eyes dropped from Zac’s face and I looked at my hands. I could feel tears well up behind my eyes, threatening to fall, heavy and wet all over the bed sheets. I didn’t want him to continue, but I needed to hear the end of the story. 

***

_“Tay, Tay come on,” Isaac pleaded with his brother, watching him throw punch after punch. Taylor was straddling David, his weight holding down the unknowing boy who was receiving the brunt of his anger. Isaac looked over at Zac, worried at the intensity with which their brother was fighting. They just wanted to scare the guy, not kill him._

_Zac nudged Isaac to go get Taylor off of him. Maybe this was going too far, maybe it was time to go home. Isaac hurried over and grabbed Taylor from behind, trying his best not to get caught by one of his flailing limbs. There was fire in his blue eyes, the rage of someone who had been hurt._

_“How dare you touch her,” he growled at David, who was still lying helpless on the ground. “How dare you lay a finger on her.”_

_“Who the fuck are you talking about?” David asked, as he sat up, blood streaming from his nose, both of his eyes quickly swelling._

_“MY SISTER!” Taylor screamed. Isaac tried to shush him. He didn’t want attention drawn to them down here on the street._

_“I don’t know your sister, man. I think you have the wrong person.”_

_“Is your name David?”_

_“Yeah, but…” Taylor lunged again, and this time it took both Zac and Isaac to hold him back. When he finally shook them off, David was already hobbling away, towards his dorm._

_“Listen to me!” He screeched as he ran over to David, who turned around quickly and shoved something into Taylor’s stomach, causing his knees to buckle. When he pulled the small knife away, Tay sunk to the ground._

_David ran._

_The world began to move in slow motion. Isaac and Zac ran towards their brother, who was crumpled on the pavement. Isaac looked around wildly, trying to find someone, anyone, who might help them. There was blood everywhere, Taylor’s mixing with David’s that had already been spilled all over the road._

_“Stay here,” Isaac said breathlessly, and ran towards the corner a couple blocks away, where he knew there was a payphone. He dialled 9-1-1, his fingers shaking violently._

_Zac stayed with Taylor, cradling his head in his lap, whispering to him “Just look at me Tay, it’s going to be okay, Tay, hold on, it’s going to be fine,” not knowing that in a few hours, his sister would be doing the same thing in a hospital room. Taylor’s face spasmed, looking up at Zac’s brown eyes. “Hurry, Ike,” Zac whispered._

_It felt like hours before the sirens were close, even though it was only a matter of minutes. They rushed Taylor to the hospital, and Zac and Isaac got into the police car that was only a moment behind. They looked at each other, a million words passing between them in the silence. They needed to get a hold of Cricket. They needed her to be there._


	16. Chapter 16

“It says here we can make our own,” Susie said, looking up from the book we had just checked out of the library. We were sitting under a big oak tree right outside, after marching up to Shirley's desk and handing over a book about contacting the dead, hoping she wouldn't question us. 

“Yeah, I saw that too. I don’t know if I trust us to make our own board, though. I would rather buy one.” 

“Where?” 

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine anyone sells them in Westerville.” 

“We could go to Columbus.” 

“I can’t drive.”

“My parents will drive us.” 

“To go buy a Ouija board?” 

“No, we’ll tell them we want to get school clothes. Then when we’re in the department store, you can go look at the games and grab a Ouija board. They’re sold in that section, I’ve seen them before when I was looking at toys while I was supposed to be shopping for clothes.” 

“But...I don’t have any money for clothes.” 

Susie shrugged and took another sip of her coke. We had procured ice cold glass bottles of the stuff at the drugstore, and now we were sipping the precious liquid like it was fine wine. “You can just say nothing fit you right.” 

I was amazed at how quickly and effortlessly the lies rolled off of my new friend’s tongue. 

“Yeah I guess that would work.” 

“I’ll ask them tonight at dinner. Speaking of, wanna come over?” 

I balked at Susie, who was casually still flipping through the book, reading up on how to properly talk to my dead brother. I had never, not once in my entire sixteen years of existence, been asked over to dinner by a friend. I looked over my shoulder, as though I would be able to see my house in the distance, my two brothers beckoning me to come home. After a few moments of silence, she looked up at me expectantly, awaiting my answer.

“Um...sure, I guess.” 

“Don’t be so weird,” she said with a giggle and a nudge of my leg. I returned her smile, sinking into the comfortable feeling of having a friend. 

***

“If you are attempting to contact someone in particular, it helps to be in the place that they died, or the place that they lived. It also helps to have a possession that was important to them...Well that’s easy,” Susie said, looking over the book, the two of us sitting on her bed after dinner. 

“Yeah, I’ll just do it in my house. Probably in his room. Surrounded by his things.” 

Susie nodded with approval before diving back into the words. I sat there silently, picking at my cuticles. We had taken a trip to Columbus earlier that day to shop for clothes. I was shocked at how easily Susie’s parents agreed, her mother saying she would happily drive us and drop us off at the store. 

“I’ll find something to do for a couple hours while you girls find some new outfits. School is coming up, you should get some nice skirts,” she said pointedly, after being introduced to me, dressed, as usual, in Taylor’s jeans and t-shirt. We spent a couple hours inside the store. Susie’s mother had handed her daughter a wad of cash and told her to be smart. I looked on in awe, the image of a loving mother forever branded under my eyelids, outlined in jealousy. 

“Does it say anything in there about who should be present? I was gonna ask Zac if he would do it with me, but maybe if all three of us were there it would help the energy.” The board was still hidden in a paper bag, which I shoved in my backpack as soon as we left the store. I stayed at Susie’s for dinner, once again, and was now thinking about pedaling home. The sun was almost set. 

“It doesn’t say. I’ll do it with you,” Susie said, trying to sound casual. There was something underneath her nonchalant tone, but I couldn’t quite place it.

“Oh you don’t have to. I think it would work better with Zac.” 

“Do you think he’ll agree to do it?” 

“I’m sure he will. He’ll do anything for me.” 

Susie closed the book and looked around guiltily, as though she had something she needed to say out loud, but was afraid to. I narrowed my gaze at her, until she met my eyes. 

“What’s the matter?” I asked her. This was all new territory for me. My brother’s were so open, and when they weren’t, it didn’t matter because I could read their every move, their ever sigh, their every look. 

“Let me help you. He was special to me too, you know.” 

The breath went out of my lungs quickly, as though someone had punctured them with a pin, or a razor blade. My brow furrowed, my eyes searching Susie’s face for what she could possibly mean by that. She didn’t even know Taylor. 

“What do you mean?” 

“He was in my grade. He...he…”

“You didn’t even know him.” 

“Yeah but I…” Susie struggled with words, sputtering around her consonants nervously. I didn’t let up. 

“What do you mean, then? You weren’t friends with him. I bet you anything he didn’t even know your name. I would know. I WOULD KNOW.” 

I felt like someone was ripping my brother away from me all over again. Susie’s face reddened with embarrassment, tears shining in her eyes, threatening to fall. What in the world did she have to cry about? Her parents loved her. They cooked her dinner every night and handed her money when she wanted clothes. She didn’t have any siblings that would die and leave her to pick up the pieces. 

She reached under her pillow and retrieved her diary, pink and flowery, exactly what a girl our age should be writing in. She rifled through the pages, found a specific passage, and shoved it in my hands. She ran out of the room, snot pouring out of her nose, tears finally falling. 

_May 4th, 1972_   
_What does a girl do when the boy she’s in love with finally talks to her? I’m not quite sure, as this is the first time it has happened to me. There’s a learning curve. But I’ll make it up as I go, I suppose. Taylor always looks like he’s daydreaming, and I often wonder where his mind is. Today, if only for a moment, it was on me. He walked up to me in the hallway, stood right by my locker, and handed me my bracelet. “I found this in Mr. Matson’s room. It’s yours, right?” Not much, I know. But enough for now. He walked away quickly, catching up Zac and meeting Cricket at the front door, the sunlight framing them perfectly. Watching them is like watching something out of a movie. Perfectly in sync._

_But let’s not forget, he knew it was my bracelet. I had taken it off to do our stupid chemistry experiment and I guess I had left it on the lab table. He knew it was mine._

_Pathetically yours,_   
_Susie_

 

I was not well versed in teenage longing. I had never had a crush, nor had I ever gazed upon the boys in the grade above me, feeling heavy with want. The words on the page were dripping with adolescent desire, the sentences dramatic and unnecessarily important. I flipped ahead. I knew what date I wanted to read next. 

 

_July 2nd, 1972_  
_I don’t know how to do this._

I turned the page gingerly. On the next page was my brother’s obituary, pasted carefully. There were no wrinkles on the page, no tear stains making the ink run. 

_July 4th, 1972_

_Jordan Taylor Hanson, Age 15, passed away early Tuesday morning at the Ohio State University hospital. He is survived by his siblings, Clarke Isaac Hanson, Christine Rebecca Hanson, and Zachary Walker Hanson. Funeral services will be held tomorrow at St. Paul’s Cathedral at 11:00am._

_July 5th, 1972_

_The first funeral I have ever attended. It was beautiful, I suppose. I can’t really remember much. He looked so peaceful. I sat a few rows behind the family. I’ve watched them for so long, the four of them so close, so in tune, so ready to face the world together. It’s sad to see them so broken. I can’t stop crying._  
_I love you,_  
 _S_

I slammed the diary shut before I read too much, my anger expanding with every passing second. I couldn’t believe this. My mind reeled. Was this the reason she had befriended me? Was it because sometimes, even now, I would catch my reflection in the mirror and my heart would leap because I thought, for one fleeting second, that my brother was in front of me? Was it because I had taken to wearing his clothes, and that I had carelessly cut my hair with kitchen scissors so that it was the length of Taylor’s? I was the closest she would ever get to the boy she pathetically loved from afar. I grabbed my backpack and ran down the stairs and out the door without saying goodbye.


	17. Chapter 17

I burst into Taylor and Zac’s bedroom (I still couldn’t bring myself to call it mine) and yelped when I saw Zac sitting on his bed, reading a book quietly. 

“You okay?” He asked, noticing that my entire body was shaking. “Where have you been? With Susie?” 

“Yes, with Susie,” I replied, spitting out her name angrily. 

“What happened?” 

I threw my backpack down on the bed and began pacing in circles around the small room, the twin beds not leaving much room for the laps I was taking. 

“No one understands. Not one single person. Everyone says they are sorry, or that I have their sympathies, how the whole town has suffered some great loss, but no one understands. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS.” 

Zac leapt to his feet, realizing quickly that this wasn’t just a short outburst of energy, but rather weeks of anger finally spewing from my mouth. Anger at the world for taking my brother from me. Anger at this town for claiming him as their own. Anger at my father for not being more affected by the whole thing. Anger at David for ruining my _entire_ life. 

He dragged me to the floor, where we sat in a heap of denim and plaid, urging me to breathe deeply and holding my face in his hands. He already looked older than he had earlier that summer, as though losing Taylor was forcing him to grow up too fast. His face was tanned from the sun, his hands rougher than Taylor’s ever were. 

“What happened?” He finally asked again, once I had calmed down enough to listen. 

“Did you even know who Susie was before I started hanging out with her?” 

“No.” 

“Do you think Taylor did?” 

“We would have known.” 

“That’s what I said!” He looked at me inquisitively so I went on, “I had seen her around school but...our school isn’t that big. And she was in Tay’s grade.” 

Zac shrugged, “Yeah I mean I probably have seen her before in my life but...I can’t remember...I don’t know.” 

“She apparently was in love with Tay.” 

Zac snorted. “Oh. That makes sense.” 

“What? Why?” 

“He had a lot of girls fawning over him last year, remember?” 

I guessed he was right, but it didn’t seem like something that was important. Sure, thirteen and fourteen year old girls can crush harder than anyone, and my brother shone like the sun itself, beams of light bouncing off of him and his perfectly golden hair. It didn’t necessarily surprise me but...this seemed different. The way Susie wrote about him, as though he were hers. 

“They never spoke. Except for...maybe once. Or twice.” 

“So what?” 

“So why does she want to talk to him so badly?” 

Zac’s brow furrowed, confused as to what I meant by that. 

“Wanted... _wanted_ to talk to him.” My face flushed, embarrassed at my slip. I knew that getting Zac to agree to the Ouija board would require the perfect timing, and I didn’t want to ruin it with this outburst. 

“She had a crush on him. That...isn’t that weird, Cricket. I know you think you’re the only one who is hurting but...you can’t just decide what Taylor meant to other people.” 

I certainly didn’t like this. Zac was my little brother, he wasn’t supposed to be imparting wisdom on me as though I was just a little kid having an irrational melt down. I searched his face, looking for the kernel of understanding I so desperately needed. All I found was concern. I was sick of people being worried about me. I nodded, defeated. 

***

That night, I dreamed about Taylor. 

It was not uncommon to see him in my dreams, seeing as I thought about him so often. I felt him all around me, all the time. I saw his eyes in the color of the sky, and his facial expressions every time I looked at either of my other brothers. I saw him when I passed reflective glass, my skin buzzing with recognition, only to realize a millisecond later that it was me. 

We were riding our bikes, the wind whipping our golden hair around our faces, smiles plastered on our lips. I could hear his laugh so loud in my ears. The scene was familiar. I had been here before.

“Keep up!” He yelled at me over his shoulder, pulling a few feet ahead of me on the country road. 

“Slow down, Tay!” I yelled back breathlessly, falling further and further behind. 

“Keep up!” He said again. He was now even further away, becoming smaller and smaller. 

“Tay, you have to slow down! I can’t go that fast!” 

He disappeared over a small hill, and I pedaled hard, the incline making it more difficult. I knew exactly where we were. I knew the rise and fall of this road well, but I couldn’t remember it ever being quite this steep. When I finally crested the hill, I looked around, heaving loudly, attempting to refill my lungs with oxygen. I didn’t see my brother anywhere. 

“Cricket,” I heard Taylor say, as though he were somewhere beside me, or above me, or….

“Cricket???” I opened my eyes, finding Zac over me, shaking my shoulders gently and whispering my name, just loud enough for it to find it’s way into my dreamscape. I thought it had been Taylor. Their voices sounded so similar. 

“What?” 

“You were talking in your sleep.” 

“I couldn’t catch up to him.” 

“Taylor?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s not here, Cricket.” 

“He was right there. He was right there and I couldn’t catch him. He was going too fast. He was going too fast, Zac.”


	18. Chapter 18

I let the tension from the day I came home from Susie’s house in a fit of rage dissipate as much as I could before finally pulling the Ouija board out of my backpack one afternoon in the treehouse. I wanted to look at it first; to feel the planchette in my hand. I found it in the department store with the board games, but the thrill of taking it out of the box caused my skin to tingle. I felt like I was doing something wrong, but exciting. 

I set the board down on the ground and placed the planchette in the center. I read as much as I possibly could about “Spirit Boards”. The library didn’t have much. I did read that there were people who were so susceptible to the mystical energies of spirits that they could use the board by themselves. They didn’t need anyone else’s fingers to help channel the movement of the planchette. I thought I would give it a try by myself, just in case Taylor’s energy was so palpable within me that I could do it with no help from my brothers. 

I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, thinking only of Taylor. I felt him always. In the air around me, in the blood pumping in my veins, in the shirts I wore and the sheets I slept under. It was easy to be filled with memories of him, since nearly every memory I had stored within my brain had him as a guest star. I tenderly placed my fingers on the planchette, willing it to move. I kept my eyes closed for a few moments, my pulse causing my fingers to slip around over the new plastic. 

“Taylor?” I asked the air. I scrunched my face up, trying to force my hands to start moving of their own accord. Nothing happened. 

“Tay?” I tried again. “I’m here if you want to talk. I’m right here.” I wondered if maybe I should have taken Susie up on her offer. I was clearly not going to be able to do this alone. Isaac was still at work for at least another hour, and Zac was somewhere inside, probably fiddling with some pipes or something. I opened my eyes and looked down at the board. It was tan, made to look like a crumpled piece of old paper. There were letters and numbers, a yes and a no, a sun and a moon. Goodbye spelled out across the bottom of the board. 

G O O D B Y E. 

I sighed, shutting my eyes one more time. 

“What...what are you doing?” I heard Zac ask me from the opening in the floor. I didn't even hear him come up the ladder, as I was too involved in trying to make the planchette move without _actually_ making it move. 

“Um…” 

“Where did you even get that?” 

“In Columbus.” 

“Don’t you need two people?” 

“Well yeah, but sometimes people can do it themselves. I thought maybe I could. Since...you know.” 

Zac shook his head, looking at me as though I was a stranger he had happened upon in his family’s treehouse. A crazed girl from the woods, but no one he knew. The look broke my heart. He was thinking that I had truly lost it this time. And maybe I had. 

He heaved the rest of his body through the opening and stood over me, his hands on his hips. Once again, he appeared much older than he had a month ago. It startled me every time I noticed it. This wasn’t the little boy who tagged along to the college party at the beginning of summer. 

“You really think you’re gonna talk to Tay through that?” 

“I don’t know...maybe…” 

“Jesus Christ, Cricket.” 

“I don’t…”

“What is wrong with you?” Zac began to raise his voice slightly, which made me cower, closing in on myself and wincing as though he were about to strike. 

“I just want to know what he wants to tell me,” I sputtered, trying to maintain my composure. 

“First you flip out because your friend had a harmless crush on him, and now you’re trying to use a board game to talk to him?” 

“He’s trying to tell me something, Zac, I know he is.” 

“Cricket.” 

“There was a piece of paper in the jeans I put on. In the specific pair that I put on when I...It was my birthday, Zac, it...he was trying to lead me to something and I need to figure it out.” 

“You only wear his clothes!! Of course you found a piece of paper that he scribbled on before he died because you don’t even wear your own clothes anymore! You wear his pants and shirts and you sleep in his bed...you cut your hair to look like his...Cricket this isn’t...this isn’t okay!!” 

My lower lip started to tremble. I desperately did not want to cry in front of Zac. I already had done that way too many times this summer. 

“You don’t...you don’t understand.” 

“YES I DO!! My brother died too, you know. He was my brother too. This isn’t all about you.” 

His words stung my face as though they were a slap. The tears evaporated and all I felt was shock.

“He’s gone, Cricket. You keep trying to contact the ghost of Taylor but...you’ve... _you’ve turned into the ghost of Taylor_.” With that he descended the ladder, leaving me to sit in silence until the sun set and the lightning bugs came out. 

***

“Here you are. Dinner is ready, if you wanted any food. I brought home some stuff from the restaurant.” 

“I’m okay, thanks,” I replied to Ike, not meeting his gaze although I could barely see his face in the darkness of the tree house. I didn’t feel like going inside and brooding around Zac for the rest of the evening, so I just sat where I was, the Ouija board already back in it’s box and shoved against the wall. 

“You gotta eat something, you know.” 

I scooted over to make room for Ike in the corner I was occupying. He nestled himself right beside me, the weight of his body automatically comforting. 

“What did you bring?” 

“Some chicken. Peas. A big container of mac and cheese. Zac is heating it all up on the stove so it’s basically home cooking.” 

I didn’t respond.

“What can I do to make you come inside?” 

“Nothing. I’m sorry, Ike.”

“What for?”

“I don’t want to be like this.”

It was Ike’s turn to be silent.

“I don’t want to cry every day and sleep in Taylor’s bed and have meltdowns every time Zac criticizes me in any way. I don’t want to miss him so badly. I don’t want to lose whole days to the sadness but...I do. I can’t help it. It’s all just...it’s all so heavy. Everything is so heavy without him.” 

Isaac put his arm around me and pulled me to his chest, so that my ear was right above his heart. The thud of his pulse made me breathe deeper than I had in days. It was like a lullabye. 

“You don’t have to be sorry for that.” 

“I just...I wish I could stop crying.” 

“Me too. Every single day I go to the bathroom at work and lose it. I just...cry. For about ten minutes. Everything gets to be too much. The guys know I do it. They have to. I’m in there for ten minutes and I come out with red eyes, sniffling, very obviously choked up. But no one says anything.” 

“Wait, really?” 

“Yep. And don’t worry about Zac. We’re all handling it differently. I don’t know if anyone is handling it well, but...he’ll be fine. He’s just...angry.” 

“He doesn’t have to take it out on me…” I said meekly. 

“Hey listen, I agree. But...I don’t know he...he watched his big brother die. He watched it happen and didn’t lunge towards him...and he wasn’t able to save him. He’s angry at himself, for the most part. I think. I don’t know. But...none of us are okay, Cricket. And you don’t have to be either.” 

“Hey Ike?” I said as I pulled away from his embrace. 

“Yeah?” 

I pulled Tay’s paper out of my pocket. I kept it there, no matter what pair of pants I was wearing. I would reach into the pocket and feel it between my fingers. A tangible piece of my brother that I missed with every molecule. 

“I found this in a pair of Tay’s jeans the other day.” 

Ike squinted down at the paper, but it was too dark to see it. He leaned over to the box we kept by the window, full of supplies for late nights in the treehouse. He clicked on the flashlight we kept stored for ghost stories and read the words that I now had memorized. 

“They look like lyrics,” he said. 

“Yeah that’s what I was thinking. I wish...I wish I could ask him. It’s not a whole song.” 

“No...maybe just a verse and a chorus? You know he was always scribbling words down. Stuff that sounded good together.” 

Ike was right. He was always making up songs, sitting down at the piano while I watched in awe at the melodies that escaped his throat so effortlessly. 

“You wanna go eat?” Ike asked, handing the paper back to me. I folded it carefully and put it back in my pocket. A flash of annoyance passed across my face, but I was glad it was too dark for him to see. I wasn’t even sure how I wanted him to react. Maybe Zac was right. Maybe this wasn’t a sign or a message. Maybe it was just a scrap of paper with some words scribbled on it. 

“Yeah, let’s go.” 

When I stepped into the kitchen, Zac was placing our plates of food at the table, complete with water glasses and napkins for each of us. It almost looked like a normal family dinner. Almost. Without saying a word I caught him in my arms and hugged him, closing my eyes. His body jerked away instinctively before giving in to the hug, squeezing me just as tight. We didn’t need to say anything. We just needed each other. 

We were all we had.


	19. Chapter 19

####  Part 3: August 

_“Don’t cry, I’m with you, don’t cry, I’m by your side…Hmm...don’t cry I’m with you. Don’t cry,” Taylor sang the bit of melody over and over, trying to get it right. I sat patiently, with my hands on the keys as if I were actually about to start playing. He shook his head quickly, resetting his mind, and started the song over. The gentle piano part immediately making my heart ache. I didn’t know how he did that._

_“If I’m gone when you wake up, please don’t cry…”_

_“Is this about mom?” I interrupted him, rudely. I had been silent for over an hour, just sitting with him while he wrote, rolling the words and notes around in his mouth until they sounded right._

_“Yeah.”_

_“Hmm.”_

_“She was in my dream last night.”_

_“Wait, really?” I asked, a pang of jealousy vibrating through my body. Mom never came and visited my dreams. If she was traipsing around through our brains, she should at least try to see all of her children._

_“Yeah. It was pretty simple. Just the two of us sitting at the piano like we used to when she was teaching me how to play. I thought maybe this was the melody she was playing, but I can’t quite remember. The harder I think about it the farther away it seems.”_

_That was the funny thing about dreams, I supposed. Mine were always so vivid and colorful, filled with adventure, like a chapter book unfolding in my head, but a few hours later I could only remember bits and pieces. A few words, an image._

_“Do you even remember her that well?” I asked earnestly. I wasn’t trying to challenge him, I just honestly wanted to know. I could barely remember her, apart from from a few key moments that stood out boldly in my brain._

_“Yeah, I do. I don’t really know how. But I do. I remember her reading to me when I came into her bedroom and I remember her teaching me to play, obviously. I remember her looking up at me from her pillow when she had been crying or sleeping for hours and she would smile, like I was a...like I was…”_

_“An angel,” I finished. I knew the look well. I had seen my mother give Taylor that look plenty of times, and I was sure that the look had crossed my own face more than once._

_“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said with a snort. I nudged his arm playfully and grabbed his hands, placing the back on the keys._

_“You’re so close. I can hear the song, just keep going.”_

_“No...no I can’t remember it. It’s useless.”_

_“It’s not! So what if it doesn’t sound exactly like it did in your dream? Nothing is like it ever is in our dreams.”_

_“Deep.”_

_“Shut up. Keep going, come on.”_

_“Do you miss her?”_

_I was shocked by his question, stunned into silence. I could not begin to count the amount of times this had happened. Conversation going one way and Taylor would turn the wheel sharply, causing the words to take on a new shape altogether._

_“Ummm...I don’t really know. I guess I miss having a mom. I miss having another girl in the house and having someone to cook for us and be around when we cry. But I don’t know if I miss her. I didn’t really know her.”_

_“Yeah I guess you’re right. We were young.”_

_“Why, do you?”_

_“Maybe. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since the dream. She’s always kind of hovering right at the edge of my thoughts, as though she’s trying to tell me something. I don’t know, that sounds pretty crazy now that I’m saying it out loud…”_

_“No it doesn’t. It sounds exactly like something you would say.”_

_Taylor chuckled and began to plunk out a few more notes. He definitely looked the most like our mother. He had her blue eyes and perfectly golden hair. Maybe that was why she chose him to visit in the dream. But there was no way to know, I supposed._

***

The dream I had of riding bikes with Taylor, only to have him pull too far ahead of me to ever catch up became a recurring vision in my sleeping hours. It was always the same. I would lose sight of him over the hill, and by the time I made it to the top, he was nowhere to be found. I hated the dream, because I had to lose him again and again, but I looked forward to it every night. It felt so real. He felt so real. 

I brought the Ouija board inside and stowed it under my bed. I would forget about it in the years to come, only finding it later when I was moving out of the house and into my own dorm room at OSU. I would look at it and laugh loudly to the empty room, causing Zac to come running, a huge smile already on his face. I would flash the box to him and he would roll his eyes. An artifact of our silly and grief stained youth. 

I still kept the paper in my pocket with me everywhere I went. I left the house more often, but I still slept in Taylor’s bed. I told myself that Zac didn’t want to sleep alone, and I’m sure that he told himself that I didn’t want to either. I didn’t want to think about the end of summer when Ike had to leave and go back to school for his sophomore year of college. We only had a month left, and then it would be two of us. The dwindling numbers of our tribe chilled me to the bone. 

I woke up one morning, the air charged with the threat of a summer storm, and trudged downstairs. I popped a couple slices of bread into the toaster and waited patiently, wondering when my brothers would emerge. I started up a pot of coffee. I was far too young to have the habit, but this summer had kickstarted my need for something, anything, to keep me awake during the daylight hours. I poured myself a cup and took my whole breakfast out to the front porch. I sat on the steps and let warm wind wash over me. I knew rain was coming. I could smell it in the air. 

There were wind chimes that hung from a beam on the porch that had been there for as long as I could remember. I was certain my mother had put them there, although I guess I didn’t know for sure...no one ever actually told me. I just assumed. It seemed like something she would do. She spent a lot of time on the porch, and she also had a habit of collecting knick knacks and placing them around the house, a fact I only knew because Dad made us get rid of a lot of them in the weeks following her death. The wind chimes remained, though. 

They rang ominously, the sky growing darker as the storm grew closer. The melody they created sounded purposeful, and made me look up from coffee cup. 

Clarity washed over me just as the sky opened and the rain started pouring down. I ran inside, rushing up the bedroom to slam the windows closed. I had opened them last night to let the cool night air in. 

“Wh...what’s going on?” Zac mumbled, waking up suddenly. 

“It started raining. Time for summer storms, I guess.” 

“Oh...okay…” he flipped over and pulled his comforter up over his head. I rifled through a pile of clothes until I found the piece of paper, which was becoming soft and wrinkled from how many times I had touched it. Taking it out of my pocket, running my fingers over the words, folding it back up. 

“Hey Cricket?” Zac yelled loudly from his blanket cocoon, thinking I had already left the room. 

“I’m right here.” 

“Oh...can you get me some water? I don’t feel good…” 

“Yeah, sure. Are you okay?” I realized quickly that I had fallen asleep pretty early the night before, eager to possibly see Taylor in my dream. Zac was gone earlier that evening, and I must have been fast asleep by the time he got home. 

“Yeah. I smoked a lot last night.” 

“Ah. Yep. I’ll be right back. Were you in the tree house?” 

I knew that Ike had smoked our little brother out a couple times this summer, in an attempt to feel better. I never joined them, scared that the marijuana would just make me sadder. Make me cry even harder. So I just stayed in my room and read. 

“No I was um...I was with some friends.” 

“Oh.” 

As I went to get Zac’s water, I caught myself humming. I furrowed my brow, wondering where I got the tune that was stuck in my head. I hummed it through a few times, and then realized it was the wind chimes. 

“Don’t cry...the fight ain’t over…” I sang quietly to myself. I forgot about the water as I rushed over to the piano, plunking out the notes, attempting to commit them to memory along with the words that were now branded into my brain. 

“I’m lookin for a song to sing...I’m lookin’….I’m lookin’...” My hands kept hitting the wrong notes. I wished furiously that I was as good at piano as Taylor was, or that he had taught me more, or that I could just pick up where he left off. After about half an hour of plunking, Zac came down the stairs rubbing his eyes. 

“Where is my water?” 

“In the kitchen...sorry, I got distracted.” 

Zac grunted and took a seat beside me. He listened to a few measures, and put his hands, which were now bigger than mine, on the keyboard, playing chords that matched the melody. 

“How do you do that?” I asked.

He shrugged and played with me for the rest of the chorus...or what I assumed Taylor meant to be the chorus. There was only just a little snippet of lyrics, not enough to make a song. As we sat there playing, I heard Ike walking around upstairs. I turned to Zac in the middle of a phrase. 

“Thanks.” 

“For what?” He heaved himself off the bench to fetch his water.


	20. Chapter 20

I spent the next week pouring over the lyrics that had found their way to me. I would sit at the piano for hours, playing the same few chords over and over again. I wrote the lyrics on a fresh piece of paper, and attempted to write more, in the same voice. I scratched out line after line, eventually giving up. I didn’t understand why this was so hard. 

Ike worked nearly every day and at night he would spend time with his friends from high school who were home for the summer. He fell into a rhythm with them pretty naturally. I couldn’t imagine they had been very close, but tragedy changes everything. Surely they saw this boy who had just suffered a great loss, so they decided to open their arms to him. Make him part of the group that was wasting the summer months until they all headed back to college, or stayed in Westerville as some were want to do. They probably invited him to hang out in one of their basements, rolling joints and philosophizing, pilfering beer from the garage. He would come home late, or not at all, his clothes smelling of summer nights and smoke. 

Zac disappeared frequently as well, and I had no idea where he was going until one day I was taking a bike ride to clear my head from my last attempt at lyric writing. I saw him uptown, sitting on a park bench with Susie, both of them smiling widely. I nearly fell off my bike, and thanked whatever power I could that they didn’t see me. I felt a strange mix of emotions. 

I was sitting on the porch reading when he came home that evening, his hair tied back in a ponytail and hands stuffed in his pockets, smiling like he had a secret. 

“Where have you been?” I asked. I wanted him to tell me without being goaded. We didn’t keep secrets from each other in this family. 

“Just around.” 

He walked past me and went inside. I heard him in the kitchen getting dinner started. 

“Around where?” I asked, appearing in the kitchen doorway and causing him to jump. He hadn’t heard me following. 

“Just around, Cricket, jeez. I have friends too, ya know.” 

“She only likes you because you look like Taylor. You’re as close as she’ll ever get. Except for me.” 

Zac was turned away from me before I spat the words out, but I saw him stop moving suddenly, setting down the plates he was holding and bracing himself on the counter. He could so easily strike the very nerve that made me crack, but I could have the same effect on him if I played my cards right. 

“What did you say?” 

“You heard me.” 

The tension between me and my little brother had been building all summer, and we both knew, but refused to address it. We kept having little spats, and then halfheartedly forgiving each other out of necessity. A big fight was coming, and we all knew it. We were both growing up too fast, but in different directions, and it was impossible to keep up with each other. I saw him taking a breath, his whole body shaking with rage threatening to spew out of him in the form of hateful words. I steeled myself, widening my stance as though it would help me. As though Zac’s impending statements could physically knock me over, and I needed to be prepared. 

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, turning around quickly, fire in his eyes. 

“You’re right, I don’t. Because you didn’t tell me you were spending time with Susie, even though we promised each other we would never keep secrets from each other. Never.” 

“Oh, please,” he spat back, as though the words were sour in his mouth. 

“We said NEVER, Zachary,” I cried, my voice raising in pitch. “We drew blood. We PROMISED EACH OTHER.” 

“I WAS FOUR YEARS OLD, CRICKET. I had no idea what was going on!!” 

“But we said…”

“I was FOUR. You understand that, right? And I’m pretty sure last time I checked, you kept a pretty big secret from us earlier this summer.”

It was my turn to look like I had been slapped. 

“Shut up.” 

“You could have told us that night. We could have helped you. But no, you also went against our promise and kept it from us.” 

“Maybe I knew that if I told you, the three of you would do something completely insane and get one of you killed!!” My words rang through the entire house. The floodgates were open, and the anger we had both felt for over a month came rushing out us, unstoppable and liquid hot. Neither of seemed to know how to stop. 

“Don’t bring Taylor into this.”

“How? How could I not, Zachary? 

“Because this has nothing to do with him! It has everything to do with the fact that you’re accusing me of betraying our so called pact when really you are the one that broke it in the first place. You’re such a hypocrite, you know that right? You think we are this perfect family, these four siblings who can read each other like books. Who know what the other is thinking at all times and don’t need anyone else in this whole world. Well guess what?! That’s not who we are and that’s not who we ever have been. We are just a bunch of fucked up kids who are whispered about in the hall and whose family is dying off at an alarming rate. That’s it. That’s all we are.” 

I lunged at him, knocking over a chair in my path. I pushed him to the ground, and almost immediately, he wrenched my body around so that he was on top of me. I shrieked and threw my body weight around, attempting to switch our positions yet again so that I had the upper hand. I wanted to punch him, and I needed to be in a good position to swing my arm. He grunted as I put up a fight, pinning me to the ground with even more force. 

“What the fuck?!” I heard from the doorway. We both froze, mid-struggle. I peered up and saw Ike, a look of horror splashed across his face. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and we couldn’t quite believe that it had come to this. “What are you doing!?” 

He rushed over to us and pulled Zac off of me, helping me up to my feet and sitting me down on the nearest chair. He took my face in his hands and looked me over, noticing a bruise blooming underneath my eye from where Zac’s elbow had struck my cheek. I glanced over at Zac, who was brooding by the door. He caught my eye, pain still clearly on his face. 

“Sleep in your own bed tonight,” he mumbled, before sulking away. 

***

“Apologize to her. I think she’s still awake. I saw the light on under her door.” 

“You weren’t there. I don’t need to apologize to her, you’ve got it backwards.” 

“Zac you were on top of her pinning her to the ground like a crazy person.” 

“She attacked me! Just like earlier this summer! I didn’t know what else to do!” 

“Oh please, come on, you’re bigger than her.” 

“She was crazed, man. I swear.” 

I sat awake, listening to my brothers share a joint and talk about me. I wondered how they felt, the book ends of the family, now having to cling to each other because their brother had died and their sister was going off the deep end. I hugged my legs to my chest, Taylor’s lyrics in my hand for comfort. I was wearing one of his big t-shirts to bed. I couldn’t help but think about Zac’s words over and over again. 

_That’s not who we are and that’s not who we ever have been._

So what, was I delusional? Did I make this all up in my head? Our closeness, our perfect love that no one else in this town understood? I refused to believe that. I had 16 years of smiles and happiness and bike rides. Nights sleeping in the treehouse, Taylor’s body wrapped around mine like a blanket. We were a tribe, a unit, something that could not be fractured no matter how hard the world tried. 

So why did I feel so broken?


	21. Chapter 21

_Dear Taylor,_

_Hi. It’s Cricket, obviously. Last night Zac and I got in a huge fight and I don’t want to talk to anyone but you so I’m writing you this letter in a sorry attempt to feel like you’re listening to me. Which maybe you are, I guess I don’t really know how this all works. Last night was the first night I’ve spent in my own bed for a while now. I’ve been sleeping in yours. I hope that’s okay. I’m sure you don’t mind._

_The boys are doing well. Better than me, that’s for sure. Isaac is spending a lot of time with people from his grade that I guess he was friends with in school? People are way nicer to us now that you’re gone, which I don’t know if I necessarily like, but I guess we might as well take advantage of it. He also has a job, so he’s not around much. It seems like his friends are okay though. I don’t really know._

_Zac has been hanging out with Susie. She’s a girl from your grade who is in love with you. She would kill me if she knew I was telling you this, but guess what! There’s no way for her to ever know. She wrote about you in her journal. I thought we were going to be good friends but I think she was only hanging out with me because I reminded her of you. Now she’s moved on to Zac. I’m angry about it. I know I shouldn't be angry but I can't help it. I would say that I’m not to anyone else but I can’t lie to you, so I’m just going to tell you the truth. I’m angry and jealous of everyone involved. I’m jealous because Susie gets to spend time with Zac, and I’m jealous because Zac gets to spend time with Susie. I’m jealous of you because you’re the one she loves in the first place. I don’t know anything about love, but I’ve read enough books to know that first loves rarely work out in the end. You could argue that our parents were each other’s high school sweethearts but Mom killed herself so that’s hardly working out for either of them._

_I wish I could apologize to Susie but I’m too scared. I know I'm being crazy. Maybe some day._

_Last night Zac said that we were just a bunch of messed up kids and that’s all we’ve ever been. I can’t stop thinking about it. I guess, in some ways, he’s right. Tragedy struck pretty early on for us, and even before that nothing about our lives was normal. I’m seeing that more and more now._

_As you can very plainly see, I am doing the worst out of everyone. I don’t do much except think about you and try to finish this song you started. I can’t even read very much. I can’t focus on the stories, even ones I’ve read hundreds of times._

_I miss you so much that I can’t help but think that it can’t be normal. I would give anything to have you back. Anything at all. I wonder if it will ever get better or easier and less painful. I can’t imagine feeling any differently than I do now._

_School starts in a few weeks. If you were here we would stay up way too late the night before the first morning of classes, and wake up groggy and loopy. You would probably fall asleep in my bed, talking about how this year was going to be different. How once the two of us graduated, we would leave Westerville together, and never look back. We would hit the road and write songs for our supper and chase the sun until we were in California. Remember that day dream? We didn’t talk about it all that often, but it was nice to have in the back of my mind._

_I’m trying to finish that song you started, but I’m not very good at writing or playing piano. Will you help me? Please? I want to finish it for you._

_I love you, Tay. I love you more than I will ever be able to say with words. I’ll love you forever, and I miss you every second of every day._

_Cricket._


	22. Chapter 22

_“Keep up!” Taylor yelled to me over his shoulder, his hair whipping in front of his face. It was getting so long. When we finally stopped I would offer to put it up for him._

_We were racing down the road, on our way to Hoover Dam, where we would sit and watch the water rush down to the reservoir. I would make flower chains from the clover that grew all over the side of the river, and crown Taylor and myself, giggling at how beautiful he looked. He was pulling too far ahead of me, though, and I couldn’t quite keep up with him._

“Slow down, Tay!” I yelled breathlessly, pushing my legs to go faster, my thighs burning and sweat forming on my neck. We often raced on our bikes, but for whatever reason, today I just couldn’t keep pace with him. Maybe my legs were tired from running around the yard the night before, chasing lightening bugs. 

_“Keep up!” he yelled again, this time further away._

_“Tay, you have to slow down!”_

_As I was trying with great difficulty to speed up enough to catch my brother, my front tire caught on a patch of gravel and rocks in the road, making me lose control and topple from my bike. My knee hit the pavement and I yelped. I whined loudly when I brought the heels of my hands up to my face, seeing the gravel stuck into my skin and the blood forming around my wrists._

_“TAY!!” I yelled, hoping he would hear me. A few moments passed, and I began to panic. What if he never came back? What if he rode away to the dam, thinking that I was behind him the whole time, laughing at me for being slow. Of course, in the rational part of my brain, I knew that he would, at some point, realize I was not behind him. He would turn back around and come find me. But for a few moments, I felt fear descend upon my shoulders, and I convinced myself that he was gone forever, and I was alone._

_A few tortuously long moments passed before I heard him calling my name in the distance, and I was able to breathe again._

_“Cricket?”_

_I was easy to find, since I was still on the road we had just been travelling. He sped over to me and leapt off of his bike._

_“I’m okay, I’m fine, I’m sorry.”_

_“What’s hurt?” He asked, pure concern and love and worry in his voice._

_“I’m fine, just help me up.”_

_He blew on my knee, which he saw was bleeding and dirty. The cold air from his mouth stung for a moment but relieved the pain._

_“Let’s go home so we can clean you up.”_

_“Sorry.”_

_“Why?”_

_“I ruined it, I ruined our bike ride.”_

_“You fell, it’s okay. Let’s go.”_

_“Can we walk home?”_

_“We were riding so fast. It’ll take us forever to walk. Plus, you know what they say. You gotta get right back up on the bike.”_

_“Who says that?”_

_“I don’t know...people? Or else you’ll never be able to ride again. We’ll go slow, I promise.”_

_We mounted our bikes once again and I winced when I bent my leg to begin pedaling. I looked down and saw the blood collecting and dripping down my leg. “Tay,” I said, bringing his attention to the blood._

_“Oh shoot. Okay hold on.” He once again got off his bike and pulled his t-shirt off, dabbing my knee with it in an attempt to staunch the bleeding._

_“You didn’t have to do that.”_

_“And just watch you bleed all over the place as we ride home? It’s fine.”_

_“I don’t want school to start, Tay.”_

_“Me either.”_

_It was the middle of August and it was the first time we would be in different school buildings once September came. I would be starting ninth grade while Taylor would be finishing up eighth, the four of us split cleanly in two. This summer had been magical. We went to the pool nearly every day, our hair turning even blonder than usual in the sun. We came home every night reeking of chlorine and sunblock, our eyes tired from opening them in the water and staring into the sun. We would stay in our bathing suits while we ate whatever we could find in the kitchen, a new wave of energy carrying us to the tree house to tell ghost stories until our eyes began to slam shut._

_“We still have a little bit of time left, though. We’ve still got some time.”_

***

“Goodbye four leaf clover  
Hello gone awry  
Don’t cry, the fight ain’t over  
Unless you let it pass you by…” 

I hunched over the piano and diligently played through the first verse of Taylor’s unfinished song until I was able to do it without hitting any wrong notes. It took me longer than I would have liked, but it almost felt like Tay was in the room with me. 

“Goodbye four leaf clover  
Hello gone awry  
Don’t cry….don’t cry….shoot.” 

My fingers were clumsy and when I got swept away in the words, I forgot to think about the next chord I was supposed to play with my hands. I started over yet again. 

“Goodbye four leaf clover…..SHOOT.” 

“What are you playing?” I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard Ike’s voice behind me. 

“That song...the lyrics I showed you that night in the tree house. Tay’s lyrics.”

“Oh, cool. Play it for me.”

“I keep messing up.” 

“That’s okay. Just play it. I want to hear it.” 

“Ugh, okay.” I shook my fingers out and placed them back on the keyboard, attempting yet again to play the song that I was trying so desperately to finish for my brother. I didn’t even know why I wanted so badly to finish it. What would that do? My brother would still be dead and I would still have to start school in a few weeks. I would still have to face forever without him. And yet, the song haunted me. It needed to be finished. 

“Goodbye four leaf clover  
Hello gone awry  
Don’t cry, the fight aint over  
Unless you let it pass you by  
I’m lookin’ for a song to sing  
I’m lookin’ for a friend to borrow  
I’m looking for my radio  
So I might have a heart to follow….that’s all I have so far.” 

“Play the chorus again?” 

“From where, ‘I’m looking’?” 

“Yeah,” Ike said, as he slid onto the bench beside me. 

“I’m lookin’ for a song to sing  
I’m lookin’ for a friend to borrow  
I’m lookin’ for my radio   
So I might have a heart to follow…” 

“There’s more right? He wrote a little bit more?” 

“Yeah, here.” I pulled the paper out of my pocket. I didn’t need to look at it anymore, I knew the words by heart. Ike looked over the next few lines with a furrowed brow, and hummed a couple notes. 

“One more time from I’m lookin’.”

“Ike…”

“Please?” 

I played the first part of the chorus again, and he played the chords alongside me, then took off on his own once we reached the next line. 

“I've never been this  
Longing for your lovin'  
I've never been so  
Wearin' down to nothin'  
I've never been just  
Looking for a reason  
So maybe you've been thinkin'  
Of me  
Oh, you've been thinking of me.”

I looked up at my brother in awe. “That was perfect,” I said. “That fits perfectly.” 

“I was just going off of what you already wrote,” he said with a grin. He started to get up to leave.

“Where are you going?” I asked, desperate for him to stay and play piano with me, just for a little bit longer. Everyone was always leaving. Zac hadn’t spoken to me since our fight, and Ike seemed to always be at work or over at a friend’s house. I was by myself for most of the day. “Do you have to work?” 

“No, I was just gonna go hang out with a buddy. But I can stay...if you want me to…”

“I just thought maybe...we could work on this. Together? I keep messing up.” 

“Sure, Cricket.” He sat back down and smiled. “I think the issue is that you’re trying to do too much at once. Just play the piano part first, and then you can go back and sing along.” 

As we played it over and over, with Ike correcting me when need be, I heard Taylor in every note. It was thrilling. We played the verse and chorus until it was perfect, with Ike adding harmony underneath my melody as though it had always been there, waiting for him to sing it. 

“Is there more?” He asked, after we sang and played it through once with no mistakes. A huge smile was spreading on my face. This was a feeling unlike any other. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Are there more words?” 

“No...I mean…” I pointed to the paper in front of us, “that’s all he wrote.” 

“But have you written any more?” 

“Oh...um...no. I didn’t think...I don’t know.” 

“You should. You should write another verse. This is hardly a whole song.” 

“I don’t...I can’t.” 

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I’m not as good as Tay.” 

“You should finish it.” He said, a tone of finality in his voice that let me know I shouldn’t argue. 

“Will you help me?” 

“Of course.”


	23. Chapter 23

There’s a certain way the light hits when summer is coming to a close. Everything turns a little bit more golden, as though the season itself is taunting you with it’s magic, letting you know how wonderful it is before autumn comes creeping in. Days start getting ever so shorter, the dusk ushering you into the house earlier and earlier. 

There was only one week left until school began again. I wasn’t ready to go back, but I probably never would be. 

I scribbled words under Taylor’s lyrics until I found the ones that fit. It was a slow process. I would show every single line to Ike, seeking his approval. Finally, when the next stanza was written, we sat down and played it together. When Ike sang it, it sounded right. 

“And all that I have found in reason   
Is reason just to not believe   
When all that you are left, is treason   
Is treason just to let it be”

“That’s amazing, Cricket,” he said, digesting the words slowly. 

“Thanks,” I replied, looking up at him smiling. It did sound good. We added it to the song, singing through the whole thing and giggling furiously when we messed up. We dissolved into a fit of laughter so loud that it drew our other brother out of his room and down the stairs, confused at what he was hearing. It had been a while since peals of laughter echoed off of the walls. Months, at least. 

The tension was thick when Zac entered the room. We hadn’t spoken in a week or maybe two, and he had started spending nights away from the house, presumably in Susie’s bed. I wondered what they talked about, and how she truly felt about him. How he felt about her. He didn’t look exactly like Taylor, but the resemblance was definitely there. There was no denying they were brothers. The main thing that confused me was how different they acted, and yet, Susie still had now sought out two of the three remaining Hanson siblings to spend time with, to fill the void left by the death of her high school crush. I shook my head, attempting to banish the thoughts. 

“What are you guys doing?” Zac asked, attempting to sound casual while not yet meeting my gaze. 

“We’re working on Cricket’s song!” Ike responded jovially. My gaze snapped to him, unprepared to hear him call it my song, when all along I had thought of it as Tay’s song. “Wanna hear what we have so far?” 

I looked at Zac, whose long hair was covering a good portion of his face, and searched for any semblance of remorse or regret. All I saw was pure exhaustion. It was the first time I felt like I was seeing my own emotions reflected in one of my brothers. This whole time, I felt like I was the only one grieving, but I was pretty sure that Zac’s eyes were red from crying, not from weed. 

“Sure,” Zac replied with a weak smile. He stood behind us as we played and sang, Ike singing harmony below me until he took the melody on the second verse. When we finished up the chorus, we turned and looked at our younger brother. 

“That sounds good,” he stated earnestly, the pain melting off of his face. There was a flicker of excitement in his eyes that I couldn’t deny seeing. 

“Thanks,” I said, returning his small grin, “It’s not done...I think it needs --” 

“A bridge,” he finished. I nodded in agreement, and I saw Ike’s brow furrow out of the corner of my eye. 

“Yeah, you’re right,” he added, shocked that we hadn’t thought of it before. 

Zac stepped toward the bench and motioned for Ike to get up so that he could give it a try. I stayed where I was, feeling my younger brother’s energy next to me, the weight of his arm resting against mine. I didn’t want to be fighting anymore. I didn’t want the yells and the tears and the tension. He played a few chords and then started singing. 

“These blue yonder dreams   
And second hand shoes  
You’re so far gone that you live to lose  
And it’s too late to go home all alone…” 

“Did you just think of that?” I asked with wild amazement. How did he do that so fast? 

“I’ve had those words in my head for a while now but nowhere to put them. ” 

“They fit so well.”

“I know,” he said in disbelief, staring at the keys.

“Sing it again?” Ike piped up from behind us. Zac played it again, and Ike sang harmony, nudging me halfway through and pointing towards the sky, signalling me to take the third about Zac’s melody. “One more,” he said when we were done, and we sang it again, in perfect three part, smiles spreading on all of our faces. 

“I have a few more lines…” Zac said cautiously. 

“Go!!” I exclaimed, urging him to keep singing. To finish what Tay had started. The excitement tingling within me was shocking, a feeling I didn’t even know I had the capacity to experience anymore. Everything was always so heavy nowadays, but for a few moments with my brothers, crowded around a piano...I felt so light.

“You’re the tar in that old cigar  
And the worn out cable on the cable car   
And you’re too tired to admit you’ve got to choose…” 

“That’s beautiful.” I looked up at Zac, happy tears filling in my eyes. It was like he was here. Taylor was in the room with us. Ike bounded up the stairs to his room, excitement in his face, and he returned with his guitar. He sat down on the ground next to the piano and strummed a few chords, looking up at us expectantly. I nodded. We started from the top.


	24. Chapter 24

We spent the last true evening of summer in the treehouse. 

Before we knew it, the week had slipped through our fingers, and Monday was upon us, the start of a new school year only one sleep away. Ike would be headed back to Columbus in the morning, his car was all packed up and ready to go and we looked at it in the driveway wistfully, knowing that it was only a matter of time before he was gone. He promised to come home every weekend, a promise that would be broken about a month in when he started dating a girl and struggled to split his time evenly. We understood.

We sat in the treehouse as the sun set and chattered about the coming year. How it would be different now, with only two of us at the school, but we would manage. Life went on and the world didn’t end. It has a funny way of doing that. Zac stayed friends with Susie and eventually brought her around for dinner a couple times. They didn’t stay exceptionally close, since we all would eventually drift away to college. The year after I went to OSU, Susie started at Otterbein, the small but expensive college right in town, so I saw her whenever I came home for the weekend. We would smile or wave or exchange books. There’s something that inexplicably happens when you have to traverse the unknown waters of grief with someone. Even if you can count the conversations you’ve had on one hand, they become linked to you. Susie was there when no one else was, for both me and Zac. She was one of us, even if she moved to New York after graduation and we barely ever saw her in our adult years. 

The night before that last day of summer, I looked at myself in the mirror and, before I was even really aware of what I was doing, I grabbed a pair of scissors from the medicine cabinet and chopped my hair off so that it fell only to my chin. It had been getting too long and too bleached by the sun, and the way it framed my face reminded me far too much of Taylor, so I cut it. It felt good to shed the infinitesimal weight of the few inches of hair that fell to the ground. I looked up at my face, freckled and tanned, and smiled. That evening, Zac saw me and yelped, putting his hands up to my new haircut, reminding me that even though things were different we still had very little personal space. I giggled at his puppy-like awe. 

“Do you like it?” 

“Yeah! Will you do mine?” He asked, with a gleam in his eye. I didn’t ask him why he wanted a cut, I just assumed that a similar thought had crossed his mine. With his hair long and sun bleached, he looked more like Taylor with every passing day. I cut it short, cropping it close to his skull. 

“I guess my hair is brown,” he said with a shrug when he looked at himself in the mirror. I told him that it was only because it was so short, and that when it grew out by next summer, it would fade to blonde again. I spoke too soon, though. Zac’s hair grew out into thick chestnut locks, which he would eventually stop cutting, finally convinced that he had outgrown the comparisons to his deceased brother. 

“Hey Cricket...I’m...I’m sorry,” Zac squeaked, turning away from the mirror and facing me. He had grown a couple inches over the summer, and was just starting to overtake me in height. “I just...I don’t know, I just wanted to keep you safe. I can’t lose you, too.” 

“I know. We’re kind of all we have left, aren’t we?” 

“Pretty much.” 

“I love you, Zac.” 

“Love you, too.” 

***

In the morning, I awoke in Zac’s bed, realizing groggily that I was sleeping with him curled around me. We had fallen asleep in his bed. I was back to sleeping in Taylor’s and in the middle of the night I heard Zac whisper my name, beckoning me over to quell his anxieties about the coming school year. 

I left him sleeping as I went to my own room and shed the t-shirt and boxers that I was wearing. I opened a drawer and found a white peasant top, and a pair of jeans that had actually come from the girl’s section. I brushed out my short bob and crept down the hallway to take a look at myself in the full length mirror that still hung in dad’s room, an artifact from my mother’s life. I lingered there. For the first time since that awful day, I didn’t look like Taylor or his ghost. I looked like myself. I looked like Christine. 

Later that night, in the treehouse, we felt something ending. Summer, childhood, innocence...call it whatever you want. But it was the end of something. It was the final page of the chapter, and even though the summer had brought along it’s fair share of tragedy, there was something sad about the sense of finality that lingered in my limbs. 

But something was beginning, too. 

They say that when the person you love most leaves you, your new forever begins. You have to learn to live without them, because you don’t really have another choice. The love stays and your heart aches because it has nowhere to go. It festers and pounds on your ribs, trying to escape. That summer, our childhood blood pact to never keep a secret from each other was rendered useless. We all kept secrets and we would continue to do so. But that night, with a bottle of wine that Ike somehow acquired, the secrets of a college student I would soon learn, we drank and giggled and promised each other that no matter what, we wouldn’t forget what happened. It was a much easier promise to keep. 

I still miss Taylor every day. School began, with only a slight headache from the bottle of wine the night before, and some days were easier than others. There were moments I would look for him in the halls before catching myself, and other moments where his absence flashed at me from every surface. There were days I hid in the bathroom crying, and days I sat with girls from my grade in the cafeteria and laughed along with them, full throated and carefree, my head thrown back. 

I never heard from or of David ever again. I never questioned my brother’s decision to keep him out of it, not to name him or send the police after the very person that ripped our brother away from us. From what Zac told me of that night, he ran away quickly from the boy crumpled on the sidewalk, bleeding onto the pavement. For all I know, he’s still running. 

Most of the time, our teenage years disappear in a haze of cigarette smoke and questionable nights with friends, afternoons at the pool and high school longing. I had all of those experiences...but in all of those silly moments of blown youth, I felt Taylor next to me. He was everywhere, and still is. 

He’s in the sting of gravel in exposed flesh when I fall off my bike, he’s in the scratch of the wooden ladder you have to climb to hoist yourself up into the tree house. He’s in charged air of a summer thunderstorm and he’s in the rush of the water flowing into the reservoir. He’s in my brother’s laughs and the creases that line my father’s face. He’s in the pages of the books I have read a hundred times. 

I don’t really know how all of this death stuff works. 

But I do know he’s in every song I sing.


End file.
